Once her mind was made up, Eleanor acted quickly.  The outing at her father’s farm, which was not at all like the Hoover farm in Hedgeville of which Bessie King had such unpleasant memories, was one that had long been promised to her girls, and she herself had been looking forward to going there.  The troubles of Bessie and Zara had almost led her to abandon the idea of going there herself, and she had arranged for a friend to take her place as Guardian for a time.  Now, however, she sent word to all her girls, and that very evening they met at the station and took the train for Deer Crossing, the little station that was nearest to the farm.

“They’ll meet us in the farm wagons,” said Eleanor, when the girls were all aboard.  “So we’ll have a ride through the moonlight to the farm—­the moon rises early to-night, you know.”

It was a jolly, happy ride in the train, and Bessie, renewing her acquaintance with the Camp Fire Girls, who had seemed to her and Zara, when they had first seen them, like creatures from another world, felt her depression wearing off.  They had a car to themselves, thanks to the conductor, who had known Eleanor Mercer since she was a little girl, and as the train sped through the country scenes that were so familiar to Bessie, the girls laughed and talked and sang songs of the Camp Fire, and made happy plans for walks and tramps in the country about the farm.

“It’s just like the country around Hedgeville, Miss Eleanor,” said Bessie, as the Guardian stopped beside the seat she shared with her first chum among the Camp Fire Girls, Minnehaha.  “The houses look the same, and the stone fences, and—­oh, everything!”

“I wonder if you aren’t a little bit homesick, down in your heart, Bessie?” laughed Miss Mercer.  “Come, now, confess!”

“Perhaps I am,” said Bessie, wonderingly.  “I never thought of that.  But it’s just for the country, and the cows and the animals, and all the things I’m used to seeing.  I wouldn’t go back to Maw Hoover’s for anything.”

“You shan’t, Bessie.  I was only joking,” said Eleanor, quickly.  “I know just how you feel.  I’ve been that way myself.  When you get away from a place you begin very quickly to forget everything that was disagreeable that happened there, and you only remember the good times you had.  That’s why you’re homesick.”

“We’ll be able to take walks and go for straw rides here, won’t we, Wanaka?” asked Minnehaha.  She used Eleanor’s fire name, Wanaka, just as Minnehaha was her fire name; her own was Margery Burton.

“You’ll have to, if you expect to be in fashion,” laughed the Guardian.  “And you shall learn to milk cows and find eggs and do all sorts of farm work, too.  I expect Bessie will want to laugh often at you girls.  You see, she knows all about that sort of thing, and you’ll all be terrible greenhorns, I think.”

“I ought to know about a farm,” said Bessie.  “I lived on one long enough.  And I don’t see why I should laugh at the rest of the girls.  They know more about the city now than I ever will know.  I’ve been there long enough to find that out, anyhow.”