The statement made by Colonel Berry that there might possibly be something buried under the rock in the ravine had made a deep impression on the Winnebagos and Sandwiches, and the possibility began to grow in their minds until it became a very strong probability. Visions of arrow heads, Indian pottery and ornaments were before them constantly, until nothing would do but they must investigate. The elders were much amused over the excitement, but voted it a harmless pastime and gave their full consent to an attempt at scientific research.

“Older and wiser people than they have spent their time digging in the dust for relics,” said Uncle Teddy. “Even if they don’t find what they are looking for there is nothing lost, and as the colonel said, digging is good exercise. It will be no small feat to move that rock over and if they accomplish it they will be pretty good engineers.”

There were two spades and many hatchets among the camp equipment, and armed with these the Winnebagos and Sandwiches crossed the lake, went along the river until they came to the big cedar tree and from there struck into the woods, where they easily followed the trail they had traveled on that other occasion, for the cedar trees along the way were unmistakable guides. When they saw the rock again they were more certain than ever that it had been marked for some reason.

“Hurry and let’s shove it aside,” said Hinpoha, who could hardly wait.

“You talk about shoving it aside as if it were a baby carriage,” said the Captain. “Can’t you see it’s imbedded in the earth?”

And not all their efforts would budge it one particle. So they began to dig around the base. They dug and they dug; they heaved and they perspired; they threw out the dirt by shovelfuls until it made a heap several feet high, and still they did not come to the bottom of the rock.

“I bet it goes clear through to China,” said the Captain disgustedly, resting on his spade and mopping his brow.

“What sillies we are!” said the Bottomless Pitt. “What are we trying to dig the blooming rock out for? There wouldn’t be anything under it that far down. If anything’s buried here it’s in the ground at the base of the rock.”

“Well, there’s the ground at the base of the rock,” said the Captain, pointing to the heap of dirt. “We’ve dug it all up. There wasn’t anything in it.”

Slowly but undeniably the fact began to dawn on all of them. The marked rock was not the burying ground of any Indian relics. Hinpoha held out the longest, but even she had to admit it at last. Katherine, who had been skeptical from the first, laughed loud and long.

“What fools these mortals be!” she quoted disgustedly. “Breaking our backs digging up clay that’s like iron and cutting up dozens of perfectly good angle-worms all on account of an old rock with a mark on it!”

“But the colonel said there might be Indian relics,” said Hinpoha, “so it wasn’t so silly.”

“Well, there aren’t any,” said Katherine.

“Never mind,” put in Gladys pacifically, “if we didn’t find anything we didn’t lose anything either, and I’ve worked up such an appetite from digging that I could eat an ox.”

“So could I,” said Sahwah. “Let’s take the worms home with us and go fishing this afternoon. Then all our digging won’t be for nothing.”

“I bet I can catch more than any of you,” boasted Anthony, strutting on ahead as usual.

Thus ended the quest for Indian relics and the excitement over the marked rock. The elders were very polite on their return and did not ask too many questions. “Never mind, chickens,” said Aunt Clara soothingly. “You’re not the first who dug for treasure and didn’t find it, and I’ve a notion you won’t be the last. Go fishing with you this afternoon? I certainly will!” If Aunt Clara could be said to love one sport more than any other that one was fishing. “Where did you get all the worms?”

“They’re the relics we found,” said Katherine. “We dug them out of the hole we made.”

“I dug most of them,” said Anthony.

“He never touched one!” said Slim in an indignant aside to Hinpoha. “To hear him talk you’d think he was the only one who ever did anything around here.”

Katherine considered fishing the most inane occupation under the sun, so she curled up on the beach to read while the enthusiastic anglers put out in the rowboats. Gladys did not care for fishing either, so she decided to stay on shore and keep Katherine company.

“What are you reading?” she asked, sitting down beside her in the shadow of the bluff.

Katherine held up the book so she could see the title.

“Romeo and Juliet!” exclaimed Gladys. “Why, Katherine! I thought you hated love stories.”

Katherine grinned rather shamefacedly. “I do, usually,” she replied.

Gladys sat back and regarded her in wonder. Here was a new side coming to light. Katherine the unromantic; Katherine the prosaic; the independent, the hater of sentimental reading, devouring love stories all of a sudden! Gladys drew pictures in the sand and pondered on the meaning of it.

Katherine read on absorbedly for ten minutes, then she laid the book down abruptly. “Gladys,” she said, “I want you to tell me something.”

“What is it?” asked Gladys, pausing in the middle of an intricate pattern.

“What is the matter with me?” asked Katherine.

“What’s the matter with you?” repeated Gladys. “There isn’t anything the matter with you. You’re a dear.”

“There is, too,” said Katherine. “Somehow all the girls I read about in books are different. You’re like the girls in books and so is Hinpoha and so are the rest of you, but I’m not. I’m big and awkward and homely, and that’s all I’ll ever be.”

“No, you’re not,” declared Gladys. “You’re the most fun that ever happened.”

“That’s just the trouble,” said Katherine, drawing up her knees and clasping her bony hands around them. “Everybody thinks I’m a joke, and that’s all. Nobody ever admired me. People think I’m a cross between a lunatic asylum and a circus. I’m so tired of hearing people say, ’What a funny girl that Katherine Adams is! She’s a perfect scream!’ They never say ‘What a nice looking girl,’ or ‘What a charming girl,’ the way they always do about you and Hinpoha. I do wish somebody admired me once without being so desperately amused! Now I want you to tell me exactly what’s the matter with my looks. Something’s wrong, I know.” And she looked wistfully through the strands of hair that were falling over her eyes.

Gladys sat up and regarded her fondly. “Dear, fly-away, come-to-pieces Katherine!

“Do you mind if I make a few criticisms?” she asked gently.

“That’s just what I asked you to do,” said Katherine a trifle impatiently.

“Isn’t it because you’re sort of careless about your clothes?” began Gladys. “You’re always coming apart somewhere. There’s generally a string hanging out, or the end of a belt or the loop of a collar. You’re just as likely to have your hat on hind side before as not, and often you’ve had on the skirt of one suit and the jacket of another.”

She paused uncertainly and looked anxiously into Katherine’s face to see how she was taking it.

“Go on,” said Katherine briefly.

“Your shoes are often run down at the heels,” went on Gladys. “I know it’s an awful bother to keep them straight; mine are always running over crooked. I have to have the left one fixed every three weeks. But it’s something that just has to be done if you want to keep looking neat.

“And then your hair, Katherine dear. It’s so wispy; it’s always hanging in your face. Doesn’t it hurt your eyes to look through it?”

Katherine put back the offending lock with an impatient gesture, but in less than a minute it was all down again. “There!” she said. “You see how it is! It just won’t stay up!”

“Maybe it would if you arranged it a little differently,” said Gladys. “Couldn’t you curl it?”

Katherine snorted. “I curl my hair!” she scoffed. “My child, life is too short to waste it on anything like that.”

“I don’t know,” said Gladys slowly. “I don’t think anything is a waste of time that helps to make a person attractive. You know we Camp Fire Girls are supposed to ‘seek beauty.’ That means personal attractiveness as much as anything else.”

“I might take the curling iron for my symbol,” said Katherine whimsically. “Go on with the recital.”

Gladys could not tell either from Katherine’s tone or her expression whether her frank speech had hurt her feelings or not, and she remained silent.

“Go on,” continued Katherine. “Isn’t there a way to shorten up arms that are two yards long?”

Gladys could not help smiling at the lean length of arm which Katherine held out before her, stiff as a ramrod. “No, you can’t shorten them,” she said, “but you can help making them look any longer than necessary. You generally stand with your shoulders drooped forward, and that pulls your arms down. If you’d stand up straight and throw your shoulders back your arms wouldn’t look nearly so long.”

Katherine looked at the arm and shook her head with such an air of dejection that Gladys was overcome and flung her arms around her passionately. “I won’t say another word!” she declared. “Oh, I’m a brute! Katherine dear, have I hurt your feelings?”

“Not at all,” answered Katherine calmly. “You remember I asked you to tell me what was the matter. I thank you for being so frank. I’ve worried and worried about it, but I couldn’t figure out what the matter was and nobody ever took the trouble to tell me.”

“Oh, Gladys,” she went on, with such an under-current of wistfulness in her tone that Gladys was almost moved to tears, “do you think I’ll ever be really nice looking? That I’ll stop being a joke?”

“Of course you will!” said Gladys emphatically. “Do you know what I heard papa saying to Uncle Teddy one night? He said, ’Wouldn’t Katherine be a stunning looking girl if she carried herself better and was well dressed?’ Did you hear that? He said ‘stunning,’ mind you. Not only ‘nice looking,’ but ‘stunning.’”

“Did he really say that?” asked Katherine in amazement. “I didn’t think anybody cared how I looked; men least of all.”

“Men notice those things a lot more than you think they do,” said Gladys with an air of worldly wisdom. “They talk about them, too, and sometimes they can tell just what’s wrong better than you can yourself.

“I think myself you would be stunning if you only took more care in putting your clothes on. You’re so bright and breezy. And you’d be so stately if you stood straight.”

“How shall I go about to acquire this majestic carriage?” asked Katherine in the tone of a humble seeker after wisdom.

“Well,” replied Gladys judicially, “you’ve humped over so long that you’ve grown round-shouldered, and it’ll take some time to correct that. You want to go in for gym with all your might in college, and for dancing, too. That’ll teach you how to carry yourself gracefully better than anything else.”

“Thank you,” said Katherine slowly, when Gladys had finished her homily on feminine charms, and returned thoughtfully to her Romeo and Juliet.

“Mercy on us!” thought Gladys. “Whatever is going to happen? Katherine has begun to worry about her looks!”

Katherine laid the book down after a while and stared solemnly out over the lake.

“You’re sure you’re not offended at what I said?” asked Gladys, still full of misgiving that she had been too frank.

“Not in the least,” answered Katherine. “But say, would you mind writing out what you told me? I’ll never remember it if you don’t. You write it out and I’ll tack it up and check off the items as I dress.”

“All right,” said Gladys, laughing. “I’ll do that and if it works I’ll get out a book, ‘How to Be Neat, in one Volume.’ And now let’s start the fire. I see the bold fishermen are coming in.”

Aunt Clara came up triumphantly swinging her string of fish; she had caught five. The Captain had two and several of the others had one apiece.

“How many did you catch, Anthony?” asked Katherine.

“None,” replied Anthony, “but I’d have caught more than any of them if I’d had a good rod,” and he swished Uncle Teddy’s best rod around disdainfully.

“I don’t doubt it,” said Katherine.

Beside the fried fish there was tomato soup for supper. It was Mrs. Evans’ prize recipe and one of the favorite camp dishes. Nobody could make tomato soup which quite equalled hers, in the opinion of the family on Ellen’s Isle. It didn’t make any difference where she made it, up in the kitchen tent on the gasoline stove or down on the beach, as now, over an open fire.

“Nothing ever tasted so good,” sighed Sahwah rapturously, dipping her spoon diligently into the big tin cup in which her soup was served.

“I like more pepper in mine,” said Anthony, adding a touch from the pepper pot, which stood on the ground beside him.

The rest made no comments. They were too busy.

“Slim,” said Sahwah suspiciously, when her cup was empty, “just how much soup have you eaten?”

“Four cupfuls,” replied Slim.

“Mercy!” cried Aunt Clara. “That’s more than a quart. It’s a wonder you didn’t burst! I never saw a boy with such a capacity!”

“Ho, that’s nothing,” said Anthony. “I could eat twice as much, just as easy.”

“Let’s see you do it!” said Slim suddenly.

Anthony looked rather taken aback.

“Yes,” said Uncle Teddy, “let’s see you do it. Make good your boast. We’re not in the habit of saying things around here that we can’t back up. Twice four cups is eight. You’ve had one; that leaves seven. We challenge you to drink seven cups of soup. You’ve either got to drink them or do anything else Slim tells you to do. Slim, what’s the alternative?”

“Eat soap,” said Slim promptly.

Katherine grinned appreciatively at him. “Do you hear that, Anthony?”

Anthony began to look sick. “I’ll do it tomorrow,” he said.

“No, you’ll not!” said Slim. “You’ll do it right here and now before all these folks.”

Anthony looked beseechingly at Uncle Teddy, but the latter was looking at him sternly. “You brought it upon yourself,” he said. “Now either make good your boast or take the alternative.”

Slim filled the cup and handed it to Anthony. “I bet I can do it,” he said defiantly, and set it to his lips. With the first mouthful his face puckered up. The soup was red hot with pepper. He himself had sprinkled a generous quantity into the kettle after touching up his own cupful. But he had been more generous than he knew.

“I can’t drink that stuff,” he sputtered. “It’s all pepper.”

“That doesn’t make any difference,” said Slim, unmoved. “Drink it anyway.”

And they made him do it. Cupful after cupful they forced upon him, threatening an immediate diet of soap whenever he paused. After the fifth cup Anthony began to suspect that it was not wise to make rash statements about the capacity of the human stomach; after the sixth he was entirely convinced. The results of that sixth cup made the judges decide to suspend the last of the sentence. Anthony had got all that was coming to him.

A sorrier or more subdued boy never lived than Anthony that night.

“It was heroic treatment,” said Uncle Teddy thoughtfully to Aunt Clara, as they wandered off by themselves in the moonlight, “but it took something like that to make any impression on him. He is the most insufferable little braggart that ever lived. I only hope the impression made was deep enough.”

And beyond a doubt it was, for never again was Anthony heard to utter a boast in the presence of the rest.