“If I were a boy with a chest like yours, I wouldn’t smoke,” said Miss Towne, “but do as you please.”

With a nonchalant “Thanks,” Gustus lighted a cigarette.

“Going to stay in training all summer, Charlie?” asked Kent.

“Yes,” grunted Charlie, “but next summer I’ll be through with football, and I’ll smoke my head off.”

“Oh! the pines!” shrieked Lydia.

A sudden silence fell.  The road, curving around a hill, had without warning entered the pine woods.

In every direction as far as the eye could pierce stretched brown, columnar aisles, carpeted with the brown of needles and the green of June undergrowth:  aisle on aisle, green arch on green arch, flecked with sunshine, mighty trunks supporting great swaying boughs, drooping with their weight of needles.

Except for a muffled thud of horses’ hoofs, the carryall moved soundlessly for the road was thick carpeted with needles.

The others fell to chatting again, but Lydia was too moved for words.  The incense of the pines, their curious murmuring stillness, roused in her memories that were perhaps half racial.  She never had been in a pine wood before, yet the hushed sense of solemnity it wakened in her was perfectly familiar.  Its incense breathed to her secrets she never had known, never would understand, yet it seemed to her startled fancy that she had known and understood them, always.

She was still in a half dream when the blue of a lake glimmered beyond the far aisles and the carryall drew up with a flourish before three tents set in the pines on the water’s edge.

Charlie and Kent had made their preparations well and they displayed them proudly.  They had rented the three old A tents from the agent, as well as the seven canvas cots, the dishes and the cooking utensils.  The middle tent had been arranged with a rough slab-table and benches for a dining- and living-room.  The boys’ tent with three cots and the girls’ with four, were crowded but comfortable.

“The Indian school is closed for the summer,” explained Charlie, “and the Agent was glad to make a little money extra.  He’ll pocket it, you bet.  Everything’s clean,” he added hastily in answer to Miss Towne’s lifting eyebrows.  “Blankets, cots and all, even the hammocks yonder, I had scrubbed with soap and water.  I don’t live with a doctor for nothing.”

“It’s very nice, indeed, boys,” said Miss Towne.  “Come girls, get out your aprons.  I suppose you’re all starved.”

“Wait!  Wait!” cried Kent.  “That’s not the way this camp’s going to be run.  Charlie, Gustus and me do the cooking.  You ladies are company and don’t have to do anything except wash the dishes and make your own beds.”

“Gee!” exclaimed Lydia.  “I’d rather cook than wash dishes, any day.”

“I never wash dishes,” protested Margery.

“I can’t do it either,” said Olga.

“Can you boys really cook?” asked Miss Towne, in her sharp way.