"Bah! The fish aren't ex-act-ly jumping out of the water, saying 'Hullo!' to you!" it returned in the freakish drawl of a masked battery, shrinking deeper into cover amid the ferns. Yet, when the Nature students had passed on, one quivering girl, with ears intently on the alert, heard it fire off something in the same fern-cloaked rumble about a certain fly being a "perfect peach" to fish with. And the answer came in clear, ringing, boyish tones--from another angler presumably--momentarily rainbowing the wood. "Yes--sure--that Parmachene belle is _the girl_, Dad! If--if there's a trout in the stream, she'll put the 'come hither!' on it." "Bah! Likening a trout-fly to a girl! So like his 'nickum' impudence!" Pem's teeth--in her present mood--came together with a snap. And, of course, she couldn't see the gnat's raft when she arrived at the stagnant puddle, for she had borrowed the gnat's sting with which to barb the snub which she meant to inflict, some time, upon that angling youth who had sat, unabashed, in the Devil's Chair,--if ever luck held out a chance. "Yes--yes! and if he had played Jack at a Pinch forty-eleven million times, I'd do it." Her eyes were flashing now like the sky-dots in the pool, forked by iridescent shadows. "So--so _here's_ where they have their camp," craning her neck for a glimpse of a log-cabin amid the spruces. "Stud said it was just across the lake from the girls'!" After that--well! who could be interested in gnat-boats when they had just lit upon the ambush of a Puzzle; a puzzle that would only open in a pinch and shut up, like a Chinese ring-box, afterwards? And, moreover, that woodland lurking-place was just a bare mile and a half across the Bowl from the floating barrel pier, decked, as it was built, by girls' hands, and from the great heart's-ease bungalow, now, too, in process of decoration for the gala time in the afternoon around the White Birch totem; and for the blissful, far-off event, drawing nearer with every shining moment, the brilliant piazza, dance in the evening! CHAPTER XVIII REPRISALS "Her tunic is of silver, Her veil of green tree-hair, The woodland Princess donning Her pomp of summer wear. White arms to heaven reaching, Shy buds that, tiptoe, meet The kiss of June's awaking, The season's hast'ning feet! Oh, sure, a laugh is lisping In each uncurling leaf; The joy of June is thrilling Some sense to transport brief! Sister of mine, White Birch Tree! That sense my own sets free, For in thy dim soul-stirrings My Father speaks to me." It was Tanpa, with the sunburst upon her right breast, general symbol of the Camp Fire, and the birch tree in grace of green and silver embroidered above it upon emerald khaki, who read the verses which she had scribbled in the skiff's stern under cover of the general interest in water-snails, eggboats and "fresh-water sheep."