“When he had taken out the first cake and given it to us he put in the remainder and cooked it while we were attacking the first installment.”

“Was it good?”

“You bet!”

“I don’t know whether we can do it with this tiny fire, but let’s try—­what do you say?” murmured Ethel Brown to Ethel Blue.

“We ought to have trophies of our bow and spear,” Roger suggested when he was helping with the furnishing arrangements.

“There aren’t any,” replied Ethel Brown briefly, “but Dicky has a glass bowl full of tadpoles; we can have those.”

So the tadpoles came to live in the cave, carried out into the light whenever some one came and remembered to do it, and as some one came almost every day, and as all the U.S.C. members were considerate of the needs and feelings of animals as well as of people, the tiny creatures did not suffer from their change of habitation.

Dicky had taken the frogs’ eggs from the edge of a pool on his grandfather’s farm.  They looked like black dots at first.  Then they wriggled out of the jelly and took their place in the world as tadpoles.  It was an unfailing delight to all the young people, to look at them through a magnifying glass.  They had apparently a round head with side gills through which they breathed, and a long tail.  After a time tiny legs appeared under what might pass as the chin.  Then the body grew longer and another pair of legs made their appearance.  Finally the tail was absorbed and the tadpole’s transformation into a frog was complete.  All this did not take place for many months, however, but through the summer the Club watched the little wrigglers carefully and thought that they could see a difference from week to week.

CHAPTER IX

“NOTHING BUT LEAVES”

When the leaves were well out on the trees Helen held an Observation Class one afternoon, in front of the cave.

“How many members of this handsome and intelligent Club know what leaves are for?” she inquired.

“As representing in a high degree both the qualities you mention, Madam President,” returned Tom, with a bow, “I take upon myself the duty of replying that perhaps you and Roger do because you’ve studied botany, and maybe Margaret and James do because they’ve had a garden, and it’s possible that the Ethels and Dorothy do inasmuch as they’ve had the great benefit of your acquaintance, but that Della and I don’t know the very first thing about leaves except that spinach and lettuce are good to eat.”

“Take a good, full breath after that long sentence,” advised James.  “Go ahead, Helen.  I don’t know much about leaves except to recognize them when I see them.”

“Do you know what they’re for?” demanded Helen, once again.

“I can guess,” answered Margaret.  “Doesn’t the plant breathe and eat through them?”

“It does exactly that.  It takes up food from water and from the soil by its roots and it gets food and water from the air by its leaves.”