“And are all four of us expected to occupy this one room?” There was an expression of decided disgust on Miss Erskine’s face.

“Way, you see,” explained the amused President, “this tent is designed for four; two good-sized bedsteads set up in it; and the necessity seems to be upon us to crowd as much as we can conveniently.  There will be no danger of impure air, you know, for you have all out-doors to breathe.”

“And you really don’t have toilet stands or toilet accommodations!  What a way to live!”

Another voice chimed in now, which was the very embodiment of refined horror.

“And you don’t have pianos nor sofas, and the room isn’t lighted with gas!  I’m sure I don’t see how we can live!  It is not what we have been accustomed to.”

This was Marion, with the most dancing eyes in the world, and the President completed the scene by laughing outright.  Suddenly Ruth discovered that she was acting the part of a simpleton, and with flushed face she turned from them, and walked to a vacant seat, in the opposite direction from where they were standing.

“We will take this one,” she said, haughtily, without vouchsafing it a look.  “I presume it is as good as any of them, and, since we are fairly into this absurd scrape we must make the best of it.”

“Or the worst of it,” Marion said, still laughing.  “You are bent on doing that, I think, Ruthie.”

By a violent effort and rare good sense Ruth controlled herself sufficiently to laugh, and the embarrassment vanished.  There were splendid points about this girl’s character, not the least among them being the ability to laugh at a joke that had been turned toward herself.  At least the effect was splendid.  The reasons, therefore, might have been better.  It was because her sharp brain saw the better effect that her ability to do this thing immediately produced on the people around her.  But I shall have to confess that a poise of character strong enough to gracefully avert unpleasant effects arising from causes of her own making ought to have been strong enough to have suppressed the causes.

The question of an abiding-place being thus summarily disposed of, the party set themselves to work with great energy to get settled, Marion and Eurie taking the lead.  Both were used to both planning and working, and Marion at least had so much of it to do as to have lost all desire to lead unnecessarily, and therefore everything grew harmonious.

There was a good deal of genuine disgust in Ruth’s part of it, though, her eyes having been opened, she bravely tried to hide the feeling from the rest.  But you will remember that she had lived and breathed in an atmosphere of elegant refinement all her life, accepting the luxuries of life as common necessities until they had really become such to her, and the idea of doing without many things that people during camp life necessarily find themselves obliged to do without was not only strange to her but exceedingly disagreeable.  The two leaders being less used to the extremes of luxury, and more indifferent to them by nature, could not understand and had little sympathy with her feeling.