they do, don't they?" she returned.

As the girls collapsed at this, she looked up in puzzled surprise.
"I'd like to know what's so funny about that," she remarked
plaintively.

"There comes Mrs. Judson," exclaimed Debby.

There was a hasty wiping of blackened fingers on newspaper napkins as
the girls rose to greet this unexpected guest. The little figure
approaching them seemed slighter than ever, and the gingham dress
fairly trailed over the long grass. The face was hidden in the
inevitable sunbonnet.

"Hello, everybody, are you dry yet?" called a cheerful voice.

"Carita!" exclaimed Blue Bonnet. "We thought you were your mother."

Carita looked down at her loosely fitting garment and laughed. "I had
to wear this while my dress dried. Knight said I ought to hang out a
sign--'room to let.' Mother made me wear the sunbonnet because my hair
is still wet. But I said I could dry it by your fire as well as
anywhere else." She tossed away the cavernous bonnet and the chestnut
locks fell in a cloud about her shoulders. With her dark eyes and skin
framed by the long straight hair she looked like a young Indian.

"Have a potato?" asked Blue Bonnet, spearing one with a stick and
presenting it to the guest.

"Thank you." Carita took it as if this were the usual fashion of
serving this vegetable, and ate it with the ease born of long
experience. Suddenly she gave an exclamation. "Oh, I nearly forgot.
Alec sent over something. The boys couldn't come for they've nothing
to wear but blankets--they're rolled up like a lot of mummies around
the fire. But Alec and Knight and Sandy have been writing
something,--I think it's a letter."

"It's a poem!--oh, Blue Bonnet, you read it aloud." Kitty handed over
the verses and in the flickering light they gathered close about Blue
Bonnet as she read:

THE BRIDGE

"We stood on a bridge in Texas,
Near a camp far, far from town;
We stood there in broad daylight,--
'Cause there wasn't room to sit down.

"We posed on that bridge so rustic,
To be snapped by Uncle Joe,
And we smiled and looked real pleasant,
Yet one heart was filled with woe.

"For a stream, both swift and deadly,
Flowed beneath the bridgelet there,
And the creaking of the timbers
Gave this timid maid a scare.

"As sweeping eddying 'neath us
The deep, dark waters rolled,
She c