Bedlam’s councilor, who had been announced as Miss Armstrong, from Australia, had already staked her claim when Katherine and Oh-Pshaw arrived, although she herself was nowhere in sight.  One of the beds was made up and covered with a blanket of such dazzling gorgeousness that the two girls were almost blinded, and after one look turned their eyes outdoors for relief.  All colors of the rainbow ran riot in that blanket, each one trying to outdo the others in brilliancy and intensity, until the effect was a veritable Vesuvius eruption of infernal splendors.

“Think of having to live with that!” exclaimed Oh-Pshaw tragically.  “My eyesight will be ruined in one day.  Imagine the effect after I get out my pink and gray one.”

“And my lavender one!” added Katherine.

“We won’t ever dare roll up the sides of our tent,” continued Oh-Pshaw.  “We’ll look like a beacon fire, up here on this hill.  Our tent is visible from the whole camp.”

“Cheer up,” said Katherine philosophically, “maybe there are others just as bad.  Anyway, let’s not act as if we minded; it might make Miss Armstrong feel badly.  She probably thinks it’s handsome, or she wouldn’t have it.  Coming from Australia that way, she may have quite savage tastes.”

“I wonder what she’ll be like,” ruminated Oh-Pshaw, standing on one foot to tie the sneaker she had just substituted for her high traveling shoe.

As if in answer to her wondering, a clear, far-carrying call came to the ears of both girls at that moment.  “Coo-ee!  Coo-ee!  Coo-ee!”

“What is that?” asked Oh-Pshaw, pausing in her shoe lacing with one foot poised airily in space.

The call was repeated just outside their tent door, and then trailed off into silence.

“Is that someone calling to us?” asked Katherine, hurriedly pulling her middy on over her head and throwing back the tent flap.  No one was in sight outside.

“Must have been for someone else,” she reported, looking right and left along the pathway.  “There’s nobody out here.”

She came back into the tent and began arranging her small possessions on the shelf which swung overhead.

“How I’m ever going to keep all my things on one-third of this shelf is more—­” she began, but her speech ended in a startled gasp, for the floor of the tent suddenly heaved up in the center, sending bottles, brushes and boxes tumbling in all directions.  The board which had thus heaved up so miraculously continued to rise at one end, and underneath it a pair of long, lean, powerful-looking arms came into view, followed by a head and a pair of shoulders.  Katherine and Oh-Pshaw sat petrified at the apparition.