ubilate!_ It's our anniversary day as a
White Birch Group when we hold a sort of carnival in he afternoon in
honor--in honor of the de-ar birch trees just bursting into leaf." Aponi
fluttered like green tree-hair, herself. "And that's to be
followed--whoopee!--by a party: a real, full-blown June dance in the
evening--to which all the boys are invited. And--and, maybe, some girls
not of our Groups will find an invitation tucked into their stockings,
too," slily. "But for the picnic this week the Boy Scouts are hosts."

"I guess, if they knew there were two strange girls in camp--such
girls--they'd scuttle to 'come across' with an invitation, too!" laughed
the one slangy member inseparable from every group, whose talk is the
long stitch in the thread of conversation.

"Do you think they would? Oh! I don't know about that. Boys are
such--such griffins, sometimes."

Wormwood was in the eye of Pemrose, pointing the accusation, a new and
gloomy pessimism born of the Devil's Chair and Jack at a Pinch.

"_Ours_ aren't!" It was the voice of the little girl-thrush lifted
in blue-jay belligerence now. "Our boys aren't queer fish--not a bit!"
rising to hot defense of Stud, the Stoutheart, who even in callow youth,
was of opinion that Life in every phase was a game for two--in which
two, of differing sexes, could hunt together and make good headway.

"To be sure, they do love to get off jokes on each other--and
occasionally on us," went on Jessie, the brown-haired merle in maiden
form. "They have a society of older boys in their camp called the Henkyl
Hunters' Brigade. My brother Stud--he's a patrol leader--belongs to it.
And they go on the war-path occasionally--and publish a bulletin about
their doings."

"What's a henkyl?" Una's mouth was wide open; upon its gusty breath rode
horned toads and plated lizards, in imaginary solution.

"A henkyl! Oh! if you ask _them_, they say it's a freak of an
animal that they hunt up and down in the woods, trying to get its scalp,
or--or catch it alive. Which they seldom or never do!" Jessie's eyes
sparkled. "Stud says a whole 'henkyl' is hard to capture; it's so sure
to shed its horns or its teeth just as you pounce upon it."

Pem was staring intently at the speaker, her black brows drawn together
over eyes as speculatively blue as ever they had been in Toandoah's
laboratory when grasping, or trying to, grave problems of the air.

"Oh! I know. I know!" she cried suddenly, the blue break