“Oh, I wish I could dive like that, Miss Eleanor!” exclaimed Bessie, who had been one of the first to go into the water.

“Oh, that’s nothing; you can learn easily, Bessie.  You swim better than any of us.  Isn’t this water cold for you?  I should think you wouldn’t be used to it.  All the others have been in pretty cold water before now.”

“Oh, so have I!  You see, around Hedgeville we used to go into the regular swimming holes, and they never get very warm.  There’s no beach, you just go in off the bank, and most of the swimming holes have trees all around them so that they’re shady, and the sun doesn’t strike them.  They’re in the shade all the time, and that keeps the water cold.  This is warmer than that, ever so much.”

“I tell you what we’ll do, girls; we’ll fix up a spring-board and have some lessons in real diving.  Wouldn’t that be fun?”

“It certainly would!  I’d love to be able to do a backward dive!”

“Well, this is a good place to learn; no one around to make you nervous, and good deep water.  It’s sixteen or seventeen feet off that dock, all the time, and that’s deep enough for almost any diving; for any that we’re likely to do, certainly.”

Later they talked it over again, when they had dried and resumed the clothes they wore about the camp, and Eleanor Mercer, her enthusiasm warming her cheeks, told them something they had not heard even a hint of as yet.

“A friend of mine is scoutmaster of a troop of Boy Scouts,” she said.  “And he has teased me, sometimes, about our work.  He says we just imitate the Boy Scouts, and that we just pretend we’re camping out and doing all the things they do.  Well, I told him that some time we’d have a contest with them, and show them; a regular field day.  And, just for fun, we made up a sort of list of events.”

“Oh, what were they?”

“Well, we planned to start in, all morning, and make a regular trip, cook meals, and come back.  And on the way we to divide into parties; there are three patrols his troop, you know, and we could divide up the same way.  The parties were to keep in touch with one another by smoke signals—­they’re made with blankets—­and there was to be a fire-making contest, to see which could make fire quickest without matches.  And, oh, lots of other things.”

“That would be fine.”

“Then I got reckless, I think.  I said my girls could beat his boys in the water—­that we could swim better—­I meant more usefully, not just faster, in a race, because I think they’d beat us easily in just a plain race.  And I’m afraid I boasted a little.”

“I bet you didn’t; I bet we can do just as well as any old Boy Scouts!” exclaimed Dolly.  “I wish we just had the chance, that’s all.”

“Well, you have,” said Eleanor, with a smile.  “That’s what I’m trying to tell you, girls.  Mr. Hastings is over at Third Lake right now with one patrol of his troop.  He got there yesterday and the way I happened to hear about it was that he was on his way over yesterday morning—­he got in ahead of the boys—­to help us look for Dolly and Bessie, when they were found.”