Jessie, regarding her friend
with awe. "I wouldn't do all that for anything less than chicken."

Then they all laughed, just because they couldn't help it--the world was
such a wonderful place to live in.

"Just the same, I've never eaten anything since that tasted like the food
we cooked in camp," sighed Lucile.

"You must guard against giving wrong impressions, Lucy," Jessie
admonished, gravely. "Anybody, hearing you, might actually imagine you
could cook."

"When I made that remark I had you in mind, Jessie, dear," purred
Lucile.

"In that case, of course----"

"I wonder what the girls are doing this minute," Evelyn interrupted,
dreamily. "I'd give the world to get just one little glimpse of them and
our guardian and Jim and Jeddie----"

"Don't! You make me homesick," pleaded Lucile. "It seems strange to think
there's a whole ocean between us. I wonder if we'll be able to tell our
guardian, when we do see her, that we have tried faithfully to live up
to the camp-fire laws--even when we were so far away."

"Well, there are two of them that we surely haven't broken," said Evelyn
soberly, "and they are--hold on to health, and be happy."

"Yes; and we've pursued knowledge so hungrily that I haven't begun to get
the facts all straightened out yet," said Jessie, in funny bewilderment.

"I guess we're all in the same boat there," Lucile comforted. "There is
one thing I'm learning pretty well, though, and that is to count in
shillings and pence. I can figure in English money almost as well as in
United States now."

"So can I, and I haven't eaten more than two candies in a week, and they
were little ones," Jessie confided, virtuously.

"And I haven't used slang for, oh, I don't know how long," cried Evelyn.
"And I wasn't rude even to that old man who stepped on my foot and then
looked cross--"

Lucile laughed infectiously. "Goodness, we're in a fair way to become
three little angels," she laughed.

"Aren't you girls coming in to breakfast?" said Phil, appearing for a
minute at the door as they passed. "If you are, follow me"--and they
needed no second invitation.

In response to Mrs. Applegate's very cordial invitation, Mrs. Payton and
the girls had made their visit the day before. It was then that they had
learned, to their surprise, that the former owned a beautiful motor boat,
anchored farther up the Thames. What was their great delight when Mrs.
Applegate voiced her hope that they had made no special