swarming down
upon us? Anybody who can't keep quiet will be made to walk the plank.
Yes, and splash into the river at the other end of it! We wouldn't pick
you out either; we'd let you drown!"

"Then I'd sing 'For he's a jolly good fellow' as my 'dying swan song',"
protested Jess. "The kids are far enough away. No one can hear us."

She took the hint, all the same, and did not allow her enjoyment to
bubble over into music. Instead, she helped Wendy to prick the sausages
with a penknife and place them on the temporary frying-pan. The
biscuit-tin lid just fitted nicely over the bucket. In a few minutes
there was a grand sound of fizzling, and a most delicious scent began to
waft itself over the waters of the lake. The best of a bucket-fire is
that everybody can sit round it in a circle and superintend the cooking
operations. Eight penknives prodded the sausages so often that it was a
wonder they were not all chopped to pieces before they were done. At
last the connoisseurs declared they were brown enough, and they were
carefully and mathematically halved and served on biscuits.

"Delicious!" decreed Tattie, critically.

"Couldn't have been better if Toddlekins had reared the piglets on our
own farm," chimed in Peggy.

"Diana, you haven't taken a bite yet," commented Wendy.

"I'm not sure that I want any. I think I'll only have a biscuit, after
all."

"Not want any? Not want the lovely sausages that I risked so much to
get? Diana Hewlitt, what's the matter with you?"

"Oh, nothing--only----"

"Only nothing, I should say! Eat up that piece of sausage double quick,
if you value my friendship."

"Suppose you eat it for me? That would be sentiment."

"No, it wouldn't; you must eat it yourself. There'll be a shindy if you
don't. Our first feast! It's a sort of ceremonial!"

"Not 'the cup of brotherhood' but 'the sausage of sisterhood'!" hinnied
Jess.

Diana looked doubtfully at the two inches of brown, porky substance on
her ivy-leaf plate, and sighed.

"I feel like the elephant at the Zoo when they offered him his hundredth
bun: It may kill me, but it's a beautiful death," she demurred. "Well,
if you're all nuts on my having some, I guess there's nothing else for
it. Here goes! What a life!"

"The Sisterhood of the Sausage," murmured Jess fatuously.

"Don't make such a fuss; you know you're enjoying it, old sport," said
Wendy. "It isn't every day in your life you can come and have a blow-out
on Crusoe Isla