"Well, I've got an idea already. I'm going back to Cranford as soon as we've had dinner to see if it will work out. I suppose that's your son?"

She looked with a smile at the awkward, embarra.s.sed boy who had so little to say for himself.

"Well, while the girls fix you up some shelters where you can sleep to-night, if you stay here, I'm going to ask you to let him drive me into Cranford. I want to do some telephoning--and I think I'll have good news for you when I come back."

Strangely enough, Mrs. Pratt made no objection to this plan. Once she had begun to yield to the charm of Eleanor's manner, and to believe that the Camp Fire Girls meant really to help and were not merely stopping out of idle curiosity, she recovered her natural manner, which turned out to be sweet and cheerful enough, and she also began to look on things with brighter eyes.

"Makes no difference whether you have good news or not, my dear," she said to Eleanor. "You've done us a sight of good already. Waked me up an' made me see that it's wrong to sit down and cry when it's a time to be up an' doin'."

"Oh, you wouldn't have stayed in the dumps very long," said Eleanor, cheerfully. "Perhaps we got you started a little bit sooner, but I can see that you're not the sort to stay discouraged very long."

Then, while a few of the girls, with the aid of the Pratt children, washed dishes and cleared up after the meal, Eleanor took aside Margery and some of the stronger girls, like Bessie and Dolly, to show them what she wanted done while she was away.

"There's plenty of wood around here," she said. "A whole lot of the boards are only a little bit scorched, and some of them really aren't burned at all. Now, if you take those and lay them against the side of that steep bank there, near where the big barn stood, you'll have one side of a shelter. Then take saplings, and put them up about seven feet away from your boards."

She held a sapling in place, to show what she meant.

"Cut a fork in the top of each sapling, and dig holes so that they will stand up. Then lay strips of wood from the saplings to the tops of your boards, and cover the s.p.a.ce you've got that way with branches. If you go about half a mile beyond here, you'll be able to get all the branches you want from spots where the fire hasn't burned at all."

"Why, they'll be like the Indian lean-tos I've read about, won't they?"

exclaimed Margery.

"They're on that principle," said Eleanor. "Probably we could get along very well without laying any boards at all against that bank, but it might be damp, and there's no use in taking chances. And--"

"Oh, Miss Eleanor," Dolly interrupted, "excuse me, but if it rained or there were water above, wouldn't it leak right down and run through from the top of the bank?"

"That's a good idea, Dolly. I'll tell you how to avoid that. Dig a trench at the top of the bank, just as long as the shelter you have underneath, and the water will all be caught in that. And if you give the trench a little slope, one way or the other, or both ways from the centre, not much, just an inch in ten feet--the water will all be carried off."

"Oh, yes!" said Dolly. "That would fix that up all right."

"Get plenty of branches of evergreens for the floor, and we'll cover those with our rubber blankets," Eleanor went on. "Then we'll be snug and dry for to-night, anyhow, and for as long as the weather holds fine."

"You mean it will be a place where the Pratts can sleep?" said Margery.

"Of course, it would be all right in this weather, but do you think it will stay like this very long?"

"Of course it won't, Margery, but I don't expect them to have to live this way all winter. If it serves to-night and to-morrow night I think it will be all that's needed. Now you understand just what is to be done, don't you? If you want to ask any questions, go ahead."

"No. We understand, don't we, girls?" said Margery.

"All right, then," said Eleanor. "Girls, Margery is Acting Guardian while I'm gone. You're all to do just as she tells you, and obey her just as if she were I. I see that Tom's got the buggy all harnessed up.

It's lucky they were able to save their wagons and their horses, isn't it?"

"What are you going to do in Cranford?" asked Dolly. "Won't you tell us, Miss Eleanor?"

"No, I won't, Dolly," said Eleanor, laughing. "If I come back with good news--and I certainly hope I shall--you'll enjoy it all the more if it's a surprise, and if I don't succeed, why, no one will be disappointed except me."

And then with a wave of her hand, she sprang into the waiting buggy and drove off with Tom Pratt holding the reins, and looking very proud of his pretty pa.s.senger.

"Well, I don't know what it's all about, but we know just what we're supposed to do, girls," said Margery. "So let's get to work. Bessie, you and Dolly might start picking out the boards that aren't too badly burned."

"All right," said Dolly. "Come on, Bessie!"

"I'll pace off the distance to see how big a place we need to make,"

said Margery. "Mrs. Pratt, how far is it to a part of the woods that wasn't burned? Miss Mercer thought we could get some green branches there for bedding."

"Not very far," said Mrs. Pratt, with a sigh. "That's what seemed so hard! When we drove along this morning we came quite suddenly to a patch along the road on both sides where the fire hadn't reached, and it made us ever so happy."

"Oh, what a shame!" said Margery. "I suppose you thought you'd come to the end of the burned part?"

"I hoped so--oh, how I did hope so!" said poor Mrs. Pratt. "But then, just before we came in sight of the place, we saw that the fire had changed its direction again, and then we knew that our place must have gone."

"That's very strange, isn't it?" said Margery. "I wonder why the fire should spare some places and not others?"

"It seems as if it were always that way in a big fire," said Mrs. Pratt.

"I suppose there'd been some cutting around that patch of woods that wasn't burned. And only last year a man was going to buy the wood in that wood lot of ours on the other side of the road, and clear it. If he had, maybe the fire wouldn't ever have come near us, at all."

"Well, we'll have to think about what did happen, not what we wish had happened, Mrs. Pratt," said Margery, cheerfully. "The thing to do now is to make the best of a bad business. I'm going to send four or five of the girls to get branches. Perhaps you'll let one of the children go along to show them the way?"

"You go, Sally," said Mrs. Pratt to the oldest girl, a child of fourteen, who had been listening, wide-eyed, to the conversation. "Now, ain't there somethin' Ann an' I can do to help?"

"Why, yes, there is, Mrs. Pratt. I think it's going to be dreadfully hot. Over there, where we unpacked our stores, you'll find a lot of lemons. I think if you'd make a couple of big pails full of lemonade we'd all enjoy them while we were working, and they'd make the work go faster, too."

"The water won't be very cold," suggested Ann.

"Pshaw, Ann! Why not use the ice?" said Mrs. Pratt, whose interest in small things had been wonderfully revived. "The ice-house wasn't burned.

Do you go and get a pailful of ice, and we'll have plenty for the girls to drink. They surely will be hot and tired with all they're doing for us."

"I'm sorry I ever said Mrs. Pratt wasn't nice," said Dolly to Bessie, when they happened to overhear this, and saw how Mrs. Pratt began hustling to get the lemonade ready.

"I knew she'd be all right as soon as she began to be waked up a little," said Bessie. "This is more fun than one of our silly adventures, isn't it, Dolly? Because it's just as exciting, but there isn't the chance of things going wrong, and we're doing something to make other people happy."

"You're certainly right about that, Bessie. And it makes you think of how much hard luck people have, and how easy it would be for people who are better off to help them, doesn't it?"

"It _is_ easy, Dolly. You know, I think Miss Eleanor must help an awful lot of people. It seems to be the first thing she thinks of when she sees any trouble."

"She makes one understand what Wo-he-lo really means," said Dolly.

"She's often explained that work means service--doing things for other people, and not just working for yourself."

"That's one of the things I like best about the Camp Fire," said Bessie, thoughtfully. "Everyone in it seems to be unselfish and to think about helping others, and yet there isn't someone to preach to you all the time--they just do it themselves, and make you see that it's the way to be really happy."

"I wouldn't have believed that I could enjoy this sort of work if anyone had told me so a year ago. But I do. I haven't had such a good time since I can remember. Of course, I feel awfully sorry for the Pratts, but I'm glad that, if it had to happen to them, we came along in time to help them."

They hadn't stopped working while they talked, and now they had brought as many boards as Margery wanted.

"There are lots more boards, Margery," said Dolly. "Why shouldn't we make a sort of floor for the lean-to? If we put up a couple of planks for them to rest on, every so often, we could have a real floor, and then, even if the ground got damp, it would be dry inside."

"Good idea! We'll do that," said Margery, who was busy herself, flying here, there, and everywhere to direct the work. "Go ahead!"