A bountifully spread supper-table met their sight as they reached the camp.  It had been made by laying long boards across two poles, which were supported by forked stakes driven into the ground.  The eight girls made a rush for the camp-stools on one side of the table, and the eight boys grabbed those on the other side.

“Don’t have to have no manners in the woods,” remarked little Freddy Nicholls, straddling his stool, and beginning his supper, regardless of the knife and fork beside his plate.  “That’s what I like about camping out.  You don’t have to wait to have things handed to you, but can dip in and get what you want like an Injun.”

Lloyd looked at him scornfully as she daintily unfolded her paper napkin.  She nodded a decided yes when Katie whispered, “Aren’t boys horrid and greedy!” Then she corrected herself hastily.  She had seen Malcolm wait to pass a dish of fried chicken to his Aunt Allison before helping himself, and heard Ranald apologise to his next neighbour for accidentally jogging his elbow.  “Not all of them,” she replied.

It added much to Betty’s interest in the meal to know that the cup from which she drank, and the fork with which she ate, had been used by real soldiers, and carried from one army post to another many times in the travel-worn old mess chest.

Little Elise was the only one who did not give due attention to her supper.  She sat with a cooky in her hand, looking off at the hills with dreamy eyes, until her mother spoke to her.

“I am trying to make some poetry like Betty did,” she answered.  Ever since the play her thoughts seemed trying to twist themselves into rhymes, and she was constantly coming up to her mother with a new verse she had just made.

“Well, what is it, Titania?” asked Mrs. Walton, seeing from the gleam of satisfaction in the black eyes that the verse was ready.

“It’s all of our names,” she said, shyly, waving her hand toward the girls on her side of the table.

    “Betty, Corinne, and Lloyd, Margery, Kitty, and Kate,
     Allison and Elise all together make eight.”

“Oh, that’s easy,” said Rob.  “You just strung a lot of names together.  Anybody can do that.”

“You do it, then,” proposed Kitty.  “Make a verse with the boys’ names in it.”

“Malcolm, Ranald, and Rob, Jamie, Freddy, Keith,” he began, boldly, then hesitated.  “There isn’t any rhyme for Keith.”

“Change them around,” suggested Malcolm.  The girls would not help, and the whole row of boys floundered among the names for a while, unwilling to be beaten by the youngest member of the party, and a girl, at that.  Finally, by their united efforts and a hint from Miss Allison, they succeeded.

    “Malcolm, Ranald, and Rob, Keith and Freddy, and James,
     Joe the Ogre, and George.  Those are the boys’ eight names.”

“Let’s make a law,” suggested Kitty, “that nobody at the table can say anything from now on till we are through supper, unless they speak in rhymes.”