They all agreed, but for a few minutes no one ventured a remark.  Only giggles broke the silence, until Allison asked Freddy Nicholls to pass the pickles.  Recorded here in a book, it may seem a very silly game, but to the jolly camping party, ready to laugh at even the sheerest nonsense, it proved to be the source of much fun.  Even Freddy, to his own great delight, surprised himself and the company by asking Elise to take some cheese.  Joe was thrown into confusion by Kitty’s asking him if flesh, fowl, or fish, was his favourite dish.  As he could only nod his head, he had to pay a forfeit, and Keith answered for him by saying, “That’s not a fair question to Joe.  An ogre eats all things, you know.”  So it went on until Mrs. Walton said: 

    “Now all who are able, may rise from the table. 
      The camp-fire’s burning bright. 
     Spread rugs on the ground, and gather around,
      And we’ll all tell tales in its light.”

“This is the jolliest part of it all!” exclaimed Keith, a little later, as, stretched out on a thick Indian blanket, he looked around on the circle of faces, glowing in the light of the leaping fagot-fire.  Twilight had settled on the camp.  The tumbling of the waterfall over the rocks made a subdued roar in the background.  An owl called somewhere from the depths of the woods.  As the dismal “Tu-whit, tu who-oo” sounded through the gloaming, Lloyd glanced over her shoulder with a shudder.

“Ugh!” she exclaimed.  “It looks as if the witch’s orchard might be there behind us, with all sorts of snaky, crawlin’ things in it.  Come heah, Hero.  Let me put my back against you.  It makes me feel shivery to even think of such a thing!”

The dog edged nearer at her call, and she snuggled up against his tawny curls with a feeling of warmth and protection.

“Wish I had a dog like that,” said Jamie, fondly stroking the silky ear that was nearest him.  “I wouldn’t take a thousand dollars for him if I had.”

“Money couldn’t buy Hero!” exclaimed Lloyd.

“Now what would you do,” said Kitty, who was always supposing impossible things, “if some old witch would come to you and say, ’You may have your choice? a palace full of gold and silver and precious stones and give up Hero, or keep him and be a beggar in rags?”

“I’d be a beggah, of co’se!” cried Lloyd, warmly, throwing her arm around the dog’s neck.  “Think I’d go back on anybody that had saved my life?  But I wouldn’t stay a beggah,” she continued.  “I’d put on the Red Cross too, and we’d go away where there was war, Hero and I, and we’d spend ou’ lives takin’ care of the soldiahs.  I wouldn’t have to dress in rags, for I’d weah the nurse’s costume, and I’d do so much good that some day, may be, somebody would send me the Gold Cross of Remembrance, as they did Clara Barton, and I’m suah that I’d rathah have that, with all it means, than all the precious stones and things that the witch could give me.”