Bessie?"

"I think I can, Miss Eleanor," said Bessie. "It's that we ought not to
be glad when people are in trouble, even if they are mean to us, isn't
it? But we are glad, and ought to be, when nice people have good luck.
So the two cases aren't the same a bit, are they?"

"Right!" said Eleanor, heartily. "Think that over a bit, Dolly. You'll
see the point pretty soon and then maybe you'll understand the whole
business better."

Just then the girls whose turn it had been to prepare breakfast came to
the door of the Living Camp, which contained the dining-room and the
kitchen, and a blast on a horn announced that breakfast was ready.

"Come on! We'll eat our next meal sitting around a camp fire in the
woods, if that forest fire has left any woods where we're going,"
announced Eleanor. "So we want to make this meal a good one. No telling
what sort of places we'll find on our tramp."

"I bet it will be good fun, no matter what they're like," said Margery
Burton, one of the other members of the Camp Fire. She was a Fire-Maker,
the second rank of the Camp Fire. First are the Wood-Gatherers, to which
Bessie and Dolly belonged; then the Fire-Makers, and finally, and next
to the Guardian, whom they serve as assistants, the Torch-Bearers.
Margery hoped soon to be made a Torch-Bearer, and had an ambition to
become a Guardian herself as soon as Miss Eleanor and the local council
of the National Camp Fire decided that she was qualified for the work.

"Oh, you'd like any old thing just because you had to stand for it,
Margery, whether it was any good or not," said Dolly.

"Well, isn't that a good idea? Why, I even manage to get along with you,
Dolly! Sometimes I like you quite well. And anyone who could stand for
you!"

Dolly laughed as loudly as the rest. She had been pretty thoroughly
spoiled, but her association with the other girls in the Camp Fire had
taught her to take a joke when it was aimed at her, unlike most people
who are fond of making jokes at the expense of others, and of teasing
them. She recognized that she had fairly invited Margery's sharp reply.

"We'll have to hurry and get ready when breakfast is over," said Eleanor
as they were finishing the meal. "You girls whose turn it is to wash up
had better get through as quickly as you can. Then we'll all get the
packs ready. We have to take the boat that leaves at half past nine for
the other end of Lake Dean."

"Why, there's someone coming! It's those girl