." Here the spokeswoman for the two strangers had the grace to
blush, remembering the Devil's Chair. "And this--this is my friend, Una
Grosvenor, who has just been initiated into 'Camp Fire.' We belong to
the Woo-hi-ye--Victory--Group of Clevedon which, you know, is only a
hundred miles, or so, from here; and we--"

But Tanpa's face had become suddenly fascinated--illumined--to rival the
sunburst upon her breast.

"'Pemrose!'" She echoed the words softly, with transient glow. "How
novel--and pretty! But--Lorry! Oh-h! you don't mean to say--you don't
tell me--that you're anything to the great inventor, of whom the whole
world is talking: the professor who has invented an apparatus to--to
travel anywhere through the air, through space--even to reach the
moon?... Ah-h, there she is now! I wonder if she's listening to us!"

It was, indeed, at that moment that Yachune herself, the Silver Queen,
showed her placid face above the Pinnacle pines, pale on the rim of the
waning sunset. Did she dream of the Earth-valentine in store for her,
mild old Mammy Moon?

No knowing! The Pinnacle, the green Pinnacle, towered until it seemed
very near to her with the mounting pride in one girl's breast.

"Toandoah, the inventor, is my father--oh! Professor Lorry, I mean. The
Thunder Bird--the record-breaking Thunder Bird--is his invention. I call
it that; an ordinary rocket he says it is."

Well! the sky was in Pem's eyes, of a truth, now, enough blue to make a
Blue Peter, the flag of embarking, the flag of adventure; no rudeness of
"nickum", earthbound, boastful, could ever humiliate her again, with
Toandoah's emblem in her heart.

Yet, as she felt the Guardian's saluting kiss upon her young forehead,
so starred by fate, as she was introduced, one by one, to her sisters of
the White Birch Group and was invited, she the center of a flattering
fuss, to sit with them by a Pinnacle blaze, instead of being at the
pleasant pains to build her own fire, her thoughts would turn back--turn
back every now and again, to Jack at a Pinch!

To the quick-witted, surefooted youth, so daring, if so unmannerly--such
a chuff--who had not even waited to make the rope fast around his own
body before sliding down the rock to the Devil's Chair a second
time--and who had, a second time too, climbed, unaided.

But she said nothing of him--or of her recent escapade.

And she was glad that Una didn't!

Instead, she bathed every sore spot left by the experie