Dicky was abroad, radiant in a new suit of clothes, and Elsie pushed her golden head out between the curtains, and proclaimed herself strong enough for a wrestling-match with any boy or man about the camp.

      But they found Laura sitting on the edge of her straw bed, directly over the concealed gopher-holes, a mirror in her hand and an expression of abject misery on her countenance.

      ‘What’s the matter?’ cried the girls in one breath. But they needed no answer, as she turned her face towards the light, for it was plainly a case of poison-oak—one eye almost closed, and the cheek scarlet and swollen.

      ‘Where do you suppose you got it?’ asked Bell.

      ‘Oh, I don’t know. It’s everywhere; so I don’t see how I ever hoped to escape it. Yet I’ve worn gloves every minute. I think I must have touched it when I went up the mountain trail with Jack. I’m a perfect fright already, and I suppose it has only begun.’

      ‘Is it very painful?’ asked Polly, sympathetically. ‘Oh, you do look so funny, I can hardly help laughing, but I’m as sorry as I can be.’

      ‘I should expect you to laugh—you generally do,’ retorted Laura. ‘No, it’s not painful yet; but I don’t care about that—it’s looking so ridiculous. I wonder if Dr. Winship could send me home. I wish now that I had gone with Scott, for I can’t be penned up in this tent a week.’

      ‘Oh, it won’t hurt you to go out,’ said Bell, ‘and you can lie in the sitting-room. Just wait, and let mamma try and cure you. She’s a famous doctor.’ And Bell finished dressing hurriedly, and went to her mother’s tent, while Polly and Margery smoothed the bed with a furtive kick of straw over the offending gopher-holes, and hung a dark shawl so as to shield Laura’s eyes.

      Aunt Truth entered speedily, with a family medical guide under one arm, and a box of remedies under the other.

      ‘The doctor has told me just what to do, and he will see you after breakfast himself. It doesn’t look so very bad a case, dear; don’t run about in the sun for a day or two, and we’ll bring you out all right. The doctor has had us all under treatment at some time or other, because of that troublesome little plant.’

      ‘I don’t want to get up to breakfast,’ moaned Laura.

      ‘Just as you like. But it is Polly’s birthday, you know (many happy returns, my sweet Pollykins), and there are great preparations going on.’

      ‘I can’t help it, Mrs. Winship. The boys would make fun of my looks; and I shouldn’t blame them.’

      ‘Appear as the Veiled Lady,’ suggested Margery, as Mrs. Winship went out.

      ‘I won’t come, and that’s the end of it,’ said Laura. ‘Perhaps if I bathe my face all the morning I can come to dinner.’

      After breakfast was cleared away, Hop Yet and Mrs. Howard’s little China boy Gin were given a half-holiday, and allowed to go to a—neighbouring ranch to see a ‘flend’ of Hop Yet’s; for it was a part of the birthday scheme that Bell and Geoffrey should cook the festival dinner.

      Jack was so delighted at the failure of Polly’s scheme to sew him in his tent, that he simply radiated amiability, and spent the whole morning helping Elsie and Margery with a set of elaborate dinner-cards, executed on half-sheets of note-paper.

      The dinner itself was a grand success. Half of the cards bore a caricature of Polly in the shape of a parrot, with the inscription ‘Polly want a cracker?’ The rest were adorned with pretty sketches of her in her camping-dress, a kettle in one hand, and underneath,

      ‘Polly, put the kettle on,

       We’ll all have tea.’