t--listen! Listen! Surely
that's singing--singing from somewhere--_other_ singing!"

She paused on tiptoe, a green dryad, one little hand, fair as a
flower-petal, curled about her startled ear.

But Pem was for the moment comfort-proof.

"Bah! 'Tisn't quite so easy to forget," she murmured, bitterly.

Her less fragile fists were mounted one upon another under her chin as
if to hold her head up. For the first time in her life she felt as if
she were being asked to drink a cup of humiliation--she, Toandoah's
little pal--and she made wry faces over even a sip.

"Humph! Doesn't it seem queer--queer--outlandish?" she snapped,
bolstering the piqued head higher with each passionate adjective. "Here
for three months, ever since February--since I recovered consciousness
after that freezing wreck--I've been longing, oh! longing to meet again
the boy whose chaff, whose very chaff, warmed one amid the horrors....
You didn't hear it; you were too far gone. And, _now_!" The little
fists lashed out. "Bah! Who could ev-er dream that he'd turn out such a
'chuff', as the boys say--an un-civ-il chuff?... Una! it's never--it
isn't, it can't be Camp Fire Girls?"

"It is! It is! I told you I heard singing."

The answer was shrill with delight as the wiry note of the little
black-poll warbler, nesting near.

"Why! Why! Goodness! That's what I hurled at _him_; at his crowing,
cock-a-hoop back!"

The older girl's face softened, melted into whimsicality now,--into a
freakish surprise that encircled, like a golden ring, her wide-open
mouth.

Up--up from the Pinnacle's softer side, its tender, heavenly side, the
chant came ringing, the merry chant and challenge:

"Then--then don't take a nap,
For we're on the map!"

"Camp Fire Girls! Camp Fire Girls! Here on the Pinnacle 'map'!"

Pem caught her breath wildly. Never--oh! never was a turn of the tide
more welcome.

CHAPTER X

CAMP FIRE SISTERS

Never was a diversion more welcome!

"We're on the map,
R-ready to prove it with snap!"

Snap was in the very sunset as the evening breeze learned the song.

As for the inventor's daughter, her joyous relief was now a hop and now
a dance, anon a pine-caught hullabaloo, as she gleefully turned her back
upon the Devil's Chair and nickum memories--her face to the glowing sun
of sisterhood.

"Camp Fire sisters! Camp Fire sisters! Was ever such luck?" she cried.
"Oh! come, let's find them--let's join them."

"O