t mind!"

Dolly looked surprised, and pouted a little.

"If you don't mind, there's no use doing it," she said, after a moment,
and Bessie laughed again at this unconscious confession.

"I thought you couldn't help it," she said with a smile.

Dolly looked a little confused.

"I can't sometimes, when I've got a cold," she said. "But they go on so
about it then that I have sometimes tried to do it, just to get even."

"You're a tease, Kiama," said Bessie, merrily, "and I guess it's that
that you can't help. But go ahead and try to tease me as much as you
like. I won't mind."

"Then I won't do it," decided Dolly, suddenly. "It's fun teasing people
when they get mad, but what's the use when they think it's a joke?"

Bessie had seen little of Dolly in the first days of her acquaintance
with the Manasquan Camp Fire, but now, as they appraised one another,
knowing that they were to be very intimate during their stay on the
farm, Bessie decided that she was going to like her new friend very
much.

Not as much as Zara, probably--that would be natural, for Zara was
Bessie's first chum, and her best, and Bessie's loyalty was one of her
chief traits. But she was not the sort of a girl who can have only one
friend. Usually girls who say that mean that they can have only one
close friend at a time, and what happens is that they have innumerable
chums, each of whom seems to be the best while the friendship lasts.
Bessie wanted to be friendly with everyone, and what Eleanor had begun
to tell her about Dolly made her think that perhaps the mischief maker
of the Camp Fire was lonely like herself.

"You're just like me--you haven't any mother or sister, have you?" said
Dolly, after they were both in bed.

Bessie was glad of the darkness that hid the quick flush that stained
her cheeks. Since she had talked with Brack she was beginning to feel
that there was something shameful about her position, although, had she
stopped to think, she would have known that no one who knew the facts
would blame her, even if her parents had behaved badly in deserting her.
And, as a matter of fact, Bessie clung to the belief that her parents
had not acted of their own free will in leaving her so long with the
Hoovers. She thought, and meant to keep on thinking, that they had been
unable to help themselves, and that some time, when good fortune came
to them again, she would see them and that they would make up to her in
love for all the empty, u