meeting told some of her
friends that Miss Nash was evidently much surprised, if not
unpleasantly disturbed, when she recognized her caller. Immediately
she put on a coat and hat and she and the young man went out. An hour
later she returned alone, and to no one did she utter a word relative
to the stranger's visit, not even to her roommate, who had passed them
in the hall as they were going out.

Helen Nash was a member of the Flamingo Camp Fire and accompanied the
other members on their vacation trip to the mountain mining district.
The other eleven who boarded the train with Marion, the holiday
hostess, were Ruth Hazelton, Ethel Zimmerman, Ernestine Johanson,
Hazel Edwards, Azalia Atwood, Harriet Newcomb, Estelle Adler, Julietta
Hyde, Marie Crismore, Katherine Crane, and Violet Munday.

Miss Ladd, the Guardian, also was one of Marion's invited guests. The
party took possession of one end of the parlor car, which,
fortunately, was almost empty before they boarded it. Then began a
chatter of girl voices--happy, spirited, witty, and promising to
continue thus to the end of the journey, or until their kaleidoscopic
subjects of conversation were exhausted.

Every thrilling detail of the evening before was gone over, examined,
given its proper degree of credit, and filed away in their memories
for future reference. There was more catching of breath, more
cheering, more clapping of hands; but no mock jeers, now that the boys
were absent, as the events of the Boy Scouts' invasion and the many
incidental and brilliant results were recalled and repictured.

"I wonder what Harry Gilbert meant when he said some of them were
planning another surprise nearly as thrilling as the one they sprung
last night," said Azalia Atwood, with characteristic excitable
expectation. "He addressed himself to you, Marion, when he said it;
and he's a close friend of your cousin, Clifford Long. Whatever it
is, I bet anything it will fall heaviest on this Camp Fire when it
comes."

"Maybe it was just talk, to get us worked up and looking for something
never to come," suggested Ethel Zimmerman. "It would be a pretty good
one for the boys to get us excited and looking for something clear up
to April 1, and then spring an April fool joke, something like a big
dry goods box packed with excelsior."

"Oh, but that wouldn't measure up to expectations," Ruth Hazelton
declared. "It wouldn't be one-two-three with what they did last night,
and they pro