ance would have had a subduing
effect on most girls, but not on Sadie! Sadie did most of the talking as
the three walked on together, but the other two did not care. It was
enough for Elizabeth to be with Olga again, and as for Olga, she was
half frightened and half glad to find a little glow of happiness deep
down in her heart. She was afraid to let herself be even a little happy.

When the three entered the Camp Fire room Laura met them with an
exclamation of pleasure. "We've missed you so at the Councils,
Elizabeth," she said, "but it's good to have you here to-night, isn't
it, Olga? And Miss Sadie is very welcome too."

Sadie smiled and executed her best bow, then drew herself up to look as
tall as "Miss" Sadie should be; but the rest of the evening her eyes and
ears were so busy that for once her tongue was silent. She vowed to
herself that she would give her mother no peace until she--Sadie--was a
really truly Camp Fire Girl like these.

When in the last hour they were all gathered on the floor before the
fire, Mary Hastings asked, "Miss Laura, have you decided yet what our
special work is to be--the 'service for somebody else'?" she added with
a glance at the words over the mantelpiece.

"That is for you girls to decide," Laura returned. "Have you any
suggestion, Mary?"

"I've been wondering if we couldn't help support some little
child--maybe a sick child in a hospital, or an orphan."

"Gracious! That would take a pile of money," objected Louise Johnson,
"and I'm always dead broke a week after payday."

"There are fifteen of us--it wouldn't be so much, divided up," Mary
returned.

"Sixteen, Mary--you aren't going to leave me out, are you?" Miss Laura
said.

"I think it would be lovely," cried Bessie Carroll, "if we could find a
dear little girl baby and adopt her--make her a Camp Fire baby."

"Huh!" sniffed Lena Barton. "If you had half a dozen kids at home I
reckon you wouldn't be wanting to adopt any more."

"Right you are!" added Eva Bicknell, who was the oldest of eight.

"We might 'adopt' an old lady in some Home, and visit her and do things
for her," suggested Frances Chapin. "There are some lonely ones in the
Old Ladies' Home where I go sometimes."

But the idea of a pretty baby appealed more to the majority of the
girls.

"O, I'd rather take a baby. We could make cute little dresses for her,"
Rose Anderson put in, "all lacey, you know."

"Say--where's the money comin' from for the lace