She took the hint, all the same, and did not allow her enjoyment to bubble over into music. Instead, she helped Wendy to prick the sausages with a penknife and place them on the temporary frying-pan. The biscuit-tin lid just fitted nicely over the bucket. In a few minutes there was a grand sound of fizzling, and a most delicious scent began to waft itself over the waters of the lake. The best of a bucket-fire is that everybody can sit round it in a circle and superintend the cooking operations. Eight penknives prodded the sausages so often that it was a wonder they were not all chopped to pieces before they were done. At last the connoisseurs declared they were brown enough, and they were carefully and mathematically halved and served on biscuits. "Delicious!" decreed Tattie, critically. "Couldn't have been better if Toddlekins had reared the piglets on our own farm," chimed in Peggy. "Diana, you haven't taken a bite yet," commented Wendy. "I'm not sure that I want any. I think I'll only have a biscuit, after all." "Not want any? Not want the lovely sausages that I risked so much to get? Diana Hewlitt, what's the matter with you?" "Oh, nothing--only----" "Only nothing, I should say! Eat up that piece of sausage double quick, if you value my friendship." "Suppose you eat it for me? That would be sentiment." "No, it wouldn't; you must eat it yourself. There'll be a shindy if you don't. Our first feast! It's a sort of ceremonial!" "Not 'the cup of brotherhood' but 'the sausage of sisterhood'!" hinnied Jess. Diana looked doubtfully at the two inches of brown, porky substance on her ivy-leaf plate, and sighed. "I feel like the elephant at the Zoo when they offered him his hundredth bun: It may kill me, but it's a beautiful death," she demurred. "Well, if you're all nuts on my having some, I guess there's nothing else for it. Here goes! What a life!" "The Sisterhood of the Sausage," murmured Jess fatuously. "Don't make such a fuss; you know you're enjoying it, old sport," said Wendy. "It isn't every day in your life you can come and have a blow-out on Crusoe Island." * * * * * On Thursday morning Diana, who had been restless and fidgety in the night, awoke with a rash all over her face and chest. Loveday, much alarmed, would not allow her to get up till the authorities had seen her, and fetched Miss Todd. The Principal, dismayed at the prospect of infection in the school, mentally ran over the gamut of possible diseases from scarlatina to chicken-pox, ordered Diana to stop in bed, and sent at once to Glenbury for the doctor.