dear me!" cried Helen. "We're orphans then. I'm glad I had my violin
over here!"

"Is everything going to be really burned up?" demanded Heavy. "You don't
mean _that_, Ruth Fielding?"

"I hope not. But the fire has made great head-way."

"Oh! oh! oh!" were the murmured exclamations.

"Won't our dormitory burn, too?" demanded one of the East Dormitory girls.

But there was no danger of that. The wisdom of erecting the two
dormitories so far apart, and so far separated from the other buildings,
was now apparent. Despite the high wind that prevailed upon this evening,
there was no danger of any other building around the campus being ignited.

Miss Brokaw had some difficulty in restoring order. Several of the girls
were in tears; their most valued possessions were even then, as Heavy
said, "going up in smoke."

Very soon practical arrangements for the night were under way. Unable to
do anything to help save the burning structure, Mrs. Tellingham had
returned to the main building, and the maids from the kitchen were soon
bringing in cots and spare mattresses and arranging them about the big
hall for the use of the girls.

The East Dormitory girls were asked to sit forward. ("The goats were
divided from the sheep," Helen said.) Then the houseless girls were
allowed to "pitch camp," as it were.

"It _is_ just like camping out," cried Belle Tingley.

"Only there's no scratchy and smelly balsam for beds, and our clothes
won't get all stuck up with chewing gum," said Lluella Fairfax.

"Chewing gum! Hear the girl," scoffed Ann Hicks. "You mean spruce gum."

"Isn't that about the same?" demanded Lluella, with some spirit. "You chew
it, don't you?"

"I don't know. I wouldn't chew spruce gum unless it was first properly
prepared. I tried it once," replied Ann, "and got my jaws so gummed up
that I might as well have had the lockjaw."

"It is according to what season you get the gum," explained Helen. "Now,
see here, girls: We ought to have a name for this camp."

"Oh, oh!"

"Quite so!"

"'Why not?" were some of the responses to this suggestion.

"Let's call it 'Sweet Dreams,'" said one girl. "That's an awfully pretty
name for a camp, I think. We called ours that, last summer on the banks of
the Vingie River."

"Ya-as," drawled Heavy. "Over across from the soap factory. I know the
place. 'Sweet Dreams,' indeed! Ought to have called it 'Sweet Smells,'"

"I think 'Camp Loquacity' will fit _this_ camp better," Ruth