The Girl Scouts at Camp Comalong Part 25

"Rune!" repeated Grace.

"Yes, don't you know we read of it in our ancient history? A rune is a sort of alphabet of sixteen characters and all are formed in straight lines."

"I remember," spoke up Cleo. "The letters look exactly like our signal code, for wig-wagging. Don't you know there were pictures of funny clothes-pins and jumping-jacks?"

Not all were exactly clear in their memory of the runes, but each intended to look it up, and Miss Mackin was delighted that her girls had stumbled upon so interesting a discovery. Carefully collecting all the pieces the Bobbies next proceeded to mark the spot secretly, and it was this seemingly trifling detail that eventually led to the finding of the granite star clue.

CHAPTER XVIII

A CALL IN THE NIGHT

Footsore and weary, but satisfied and happy, they finished the day of the carnival hike.

"Let's all help with supper," suggested Louise, who was off duty on the K. P. (Kitchen Police) for that day. "Then we can all go down to the dock and see the excursion boat go out."

"We are not hungry, a bit," replied Cleo, "but I suppose we must try to eat. Come on, girls, all join in this chorus. It will be lovely on the lake this wonderful evening."

And so it proved to be. Never had the waters of Hocomo taken on a more gorgeous costume. Velvets, satins and silks, in every rainbow hue, were flung in reckless splendor of draperies over the great, soft surface of the water, by a sunset as prodigious as it was profligate.

Among the parties leaving, one little tribe of excursionists stayed until the very last steamer insisted, with its thrill whistle, that they either come aboard or stay behind indefinitely.

"If only we could stay," murmured one pale-faced girl. She was standing near the Bobbies, who were watching the city children embark.

"Do you like it up here?" questioned Louise. She felt guilt in the ba.n.a.l query.

"Oh, it's like--Paradise," said the wistful one. "But we'll be glad enough if the firemen in the city turn the hose in the gutter to-morrow to make a lake for us."

Louise sighed. So many children like this one must stay in the city, she knew. Others equally sad and fully as wistful were reluctantly measuring each step of the little dock and gang-plank. How they hated to go back!

"Oh, girls!" whispered Cleo. "Why don't we try to do something for a little band of that sort?"

"What?" asked Grace.

"We could lend them our camp," went on Cleo bravely. "We all have cottages here."

"So we could, and there are two weeks yet before the general schools open," sang back Grace. "I would just love to let the most needy of a group like that have two weeks at Comalong."

"So should I," declared Louise. "Let's try to do it."

"There's the caretaker; get a name and address from her," suggested Julia hurriedly.

"Better have Mackey do it," said Corene, who promptly sidled up to the director with the proposition.

"I don't know," demurred Miss Mackin in answer, "but it won't do any harm to have a name and address." So she in turn stepped up to the director of the excursion party.

The children, she learned, were from a tenement district, and were not technically sick, but oh, how pitifully near it!

As each little victim pa.s.sed along, the Bobbies' determination grew.

They would be happy to surrender their beloved camp for such a human cause as this.

One short hour later, around a friendly little campfire, the plans were made. Everything in the camp and the camp included would be turned over to the city troop (they should all be enrolled as Scouts before taking possession), and for the two weeks before school opened these slum children would come back to Paradise.

"You must realize," explained Miss Mackin, "this will mean at least the complete sacrifice of your bedding. You may take these blankets, and we will ask headquarters to send us bed covering, but the cots----"

"We will donate them to a mercy camp for next year," spoke up Julia.

"I am sure the home folks will all be perfectly satisfied."

"And it won't hurt our lovely flag," reasoned Louise. "Of course we will turn everything except our personal belongings over to the organization, at any rate."

"Did you expect to make Comalong a regular summer Scout camp?" asked Miss Mackin.

"Surely," replied Corene. "We were just experimenting at first, but now we know it will be a real practical camp for any amount of summers."

"In that case," proposed Miss Mackin, "we will notify headquarters and have inventory taken at once. Are you perfectly sure you want to give up before the end of the month?"

"Positive," insisted Louise. "I couldn't enjoy this a week longer and remember that little wistful, woeful-faced girl, who said she hoped the firemen would be allowed to make a gutter-lake in the city for them to-morrow."

"Indeed, we couldn't," chimed in Corene. "And besides, just think what it will mean to give a real fresh air camp donation?"

"Yes, nothing could be better," a.s.sented the director happily. "And as you all can go to your home cottages it doesn't seem quite so gigantic a sacrifice."

"But camp is ideal," murmured Julia, putting one more small log on the dying embers; just enough to keep mosquitoes away.

"Perfect," joined in Cleo, her voice dropping or dripping with regret.

"That's the very reason we want to do this--to put a seal of a perfect summer on it all," declared Corene, who perhaps more than the others felt a really deep responsibility for that camp; from its very inception at the Essveay School, to its fullest day, that just closed on the carnival hike.

So it was all agreed and settled. Camp Comalong was to be turned over to the city children and their Social Service caretakers, by the end of the week.

Somehow it was a little saddening, however, and it was very evident that the Bobbies did not feel like singing the usual woodland Good Night, as they prepared for their sleep in the big canvas cradle under the stars.

"Dreaming!" minds dimly awoke with that vague idea.

"No, someone is calling," spoke Isabel, as if anyone had spoken before.

They listened. Came a cautious call:

"Girls! Bobbie! Grace!"

"It's Peg," exclaimed a chorus, and with that realization each felt just a little bit guilty that the new ideas of the evening before had so obliterated the troubles of Peg from their Scout consideration.

Bare feet instantly pattered on the bare boards. The night light was reached and turned up and the tent flap "unlocked."