he boys find out that you do, or they'll never stop
teasing you."

A bountifully spread supper-table met their sight as they reached the
camp. It had been made by laying long boards across two poles, which were
supported by forked stakes driven into the ground. The eight girls made a
rush for the camp-stools on one side of the table, and the eight boys
grabbed those on the other side.

"Don't have to have no manners in the woods," remarked little Freddy
Nicholls, straddling his stool, and beginning his supper, regardless of
the knife and fork beside his plate. "That's what I like about camping
out. You don't have to wait to have things handed to you, but can dip in
and get what you want like an Injun."

Lloyd looked at him scornfully as she daintily unfolded her paper napkin.
She nodded a decided yes when Katie whispered, "Aren't boys horrid and
greedy!" Then she corrected herself hastily. She had seen Malcolm wait to
pass a dish of fried chicken to his Aunt Allison before helping himself,
and heard Ranald apologise to his next neighbour for accidentally jogging
his elbow. "Not all of them," she replied.

It added much to Betty's interest in the meal to know that the cup from
which she drank, and the fork with which she ate, had been used by real
soldiers, and carried from one army post to another many times in the
travel-worn old mess chest.

Little Elise was the only one who did not give due attention to her
supper. She sat with a cooky in her hand, looking off at the hills with
dreamy eyes, until her mother spoke to her.

"I am trying to make some poetry like Betty did," she answered. Ever since
the play her thoughts seemed trying to twist themselves into rhymes, and
she was constantly coming up to her mother with a new verse she had just
made.

"Well, what is it, Titania?" asked Mrs. Walton, seeing from the gleam of
satisfaction in the black eyes that the verse was ready.

"It's all of our names," she said, shyly, waving her hand toward the girls
on her side of the table.

"Betty, Corinne, and Lloyd, Margery, Kitty, and Kate,
Allison and Elise all together make eight."

"Oh, that's easy," said Rob. "You just strung a lot of names together.
Anybody can do that."

"You do it, then," proposed Kitty. "Make a verse with the boys' names in
it."

"Malcolm, Ranald, and Rob, Jamie, Freddy, Keith," he began, boldly, then
hesitated. "There isn't any rhyme for Keith."

"Change them around," suggested M