the ridge
poles, and laying down the floors of the new tents, but when it came to
stretching the canvas over the framework, they were not in it with the
girls.

"You men mean well, but I never saw anything so clumsy in my life!"
declared Eleanor, laughingly. "It's a wonder to me how you ever come
home alive when you go out camping by yourselves."

"Oh, we manage somehow," boasted Charlie Jamieson.

"That's just about what you do do! You manage--somehow! And, yet, when
this Camp Fire movement started, all the men I knew sat around and
jeered, and said that girls were just jealous of the good times the Boy
Scouts had, and predicted that unless we took men along to look after
us, we'd be in all sorts of trouble the first time we ever undertook to
spend a night in camp!"

Charlie shook his head at Trenwith in mock alarm.

"Getting pretty independent, aren't they?" he said to his friend. "You
mark my words, Billy, the old-fashioned women don't exist any more!"

"And it's a good thing if they don't!" Eleanor flashed back at him.
"They do, though, only you men don't know the real thing when you see
it. You have an idea that a woman ought to be helpless and clinging.
Maybe that was all right in the old days, when there were always plenty
of men to look after a woman. But how about the way things are now?
Women have to go into shops and offices and factories to earn a living,
don't they, just the way men do?"

"They do--more's the pity!" said Trenwith.

Eleanor looked at him as if she understood just what he meant.

"Maybe it isn't so much of a pity, though," she said. "I tell you one
thing--a girl isn't going to make any the worse wife for being
self-reliant, and knowing how to take care of herself a little bit. And
that's what we want to make of our Camp Fire Girls--girls who can help
themselves if there's need for it, and who don't need to have a man
wasting a lot of time doing things for them that he ought to be spending
in serious work--things that she can do just as well for herself."

She stood before them as she spoke, a splendid figure of youth, and
health and strength. And, as she spoke, she plunged her hand into a
capacious pocket in her skirt.

"There!" she said, "that's one of the things that has kept women
helpless. It wasn't fashionable to have pockets, so men got one great
advantage just in their clothes. Camp Fire Girls have pockets!"

"You say that as if it was some sort of a motto," said Charlie,