“Well! we have tumbled into a camp of milk and honey.”

Lieutenant Hayward, the observer, with the binoculars, from whom the young air-scout had taken orders as he flew over the shore, was almost guilty of smacking his lips in relish of the fare set before him in the light of the rainbowing Council Fire and of two camp-lanterns which turned the antique silver of the sands to gold.
“Keep the home-fires burning!”

he chanted. “Ye zephyrs! I don’t think I ever appreciated them so much before. Certainly that’s a corking Council Fire; all those wonderful colors; fairy lilac shading into blue flame, rose, green, and yellow, which the copper-corroded wreck-wood throws off!”

“Corroded! The green is just about the hue of the soldiers’ buttons up--up at Camp Evens, after the chlorine-gas changed them, eh, Olive?” murmured Sara reminiscently under her breath--forbearing to vent upon the banquetting sky-lords the story of a gruesome episode on the day when four of the girls present visited her brother in camp. “Oh! won’t you tell us why you flew over--flew low over our fire, this evening?” she burst forth suddenly, eagerly. “Did you really take it for a spy-bonfire, on this lonely beach, signaling out to sea? Are you--are you air-scouts, patrolling, on the lookout for--for huts in the woods--secret wireless----”

But the observer held up a pleading hand.

“How can you ask me, fair Earth Daughter, to discuss anything at present but--but these wings and camouflage? Aviators’ slang!” he murmured divertingly, beaming upon his forthcoming mouthful of creamed chicken, greenly disguised with the juiciest of young peas.

“Canned as well as camouflaged--the wings!” Arline’s shoulders were hunched in a deprecatory rainbow. “The peas are home-grown, though, from our own war-garden on that prickly wretch of a hill off there.” She laughed. “There--there was a great shelling off this coast this morning,” glancing towards the night-sea whence a hostile attack might come.

“Ha! And were the shells ‘incomers’ or ‘outgoers,’ as the soldiers say? Apparently none of them lodged in the camouflage--or in these dandy hot-air rolls.” The a?rial observer laughed, falling in with the girlish jest.

“Warmed over air!” The Rainbow touched a tepid finger-roll. “We got the receipt from our Wohelo magazine.”

“‘Zooms’ for Wohelo!”
“Fish-tails for breakfast,
Cloud-puffs for tea,
But Camp Fire rolls
Are the feast for me!”

chanted “Goggle Eyes,” loftily improvising with an inspired glance at the violet night-sky.

“We can picture the air-puffs, but whence--whence the fish-tail ménu? Flying fish?” queried Olive, breaking into the airy chit-chat.

“No, fish-tail breezes--flapping gusts--that blow you about up there--a lively relish for your rations!”

Here the older aviator glanced sidewise at Sara, as one who has neatly weathered a downthrow current of curiosity.

“Humph! Silent as a fish! Questions taboo! They’ll tell you nothing, these air-scouts--nothing that you’d really like to find out about,” murmured the inquisitive one, teasing the fire-logs with a birch-stick until they matched her own tantalized flame.

“Well!... Well! I’m glad you’re not missing Ground-School dinners now,” she vouchsafed aloud. “When you’ve finished rhyming over the rolls, oh! won’t you--please--tell us something about flying, about your parade-ground, up there?”

“You--you tell ’em, Big Boy!” The observer nudged the younger aviator.

“Well! what shall it be? We sky-skimmers can do about everything with our wings that the birds do with theirs, you know, except flap them. Along some lines we could teach our feathered friends a few tricks!” The younger man laughed over his loyalty cake, less most of the usual ingredients, plus spices and skill. “How about emulating the somersault of a tumble-pigeon--looping the loop--or racing an express train across endless prairies, and, when you caught up with it, flying low, bumping your wheels on the cab of the locomotive, to let the engineer know he wasn’t ‘in it,’ eh?”

“Bravo! What fun! And the engineer, how would he take it?”

“Why, he’d come out and wave his arms, to ‘shoo’ us off, while the passengers flourished hats and handkerchiefs from the train-windows. Ye bats and flying cats! but this honey is good. Did you hive it yourselves as well as grow the peas?”

“No, one of the girls had it sent to her by an uncle who has a bee-farm in Vermont. Well!... Well! We’re waiting to hear more from the latest flying cat--flying man, rather.”

“Great cats! you are, eh?” Tailspin Ned laughed through the firelight. “Ha! What about the thrills we gave civilians--those ‘gawkers of the clouds’--on one public holiday, when our field was thrown open to the public? Thrill after thrill, joke after joke, put over on them!... But, oh, I say, this is awfully one-sided. Those quite too fetching ‘togs,’--pardon me, those very picturesque dresses, head-bands, moccasins, and so forth--they signify something--some ceremony. Now! won’t you let us come in on it?”

“What! On our monthly council meeting!” The Guardian smiled, as smiled her symbol, the yellow sunburst embroidered upon her breast. “As for this rainbowed Council Fire, whose smoke guided you to earth, we were only using it as a background this evening--an accessory. Being such a still night, the program--its opening part--centred around a candle lighting ceremony arranged by one of our number.”

Along a red lane of firelight she glanced at Olive, beautiful in the ruby glow which brought out the wings of a heron woven into her shimmering head-band and the Torch Bearer’s emblem, stenciled on cloth--as the clawing Witch was stenciled upon the fuselage of the a?roplane--crossed logs, flame-tongue, pearl-white smoke, upon the front of her khaki dress, which, with its manifold, meaningful embroideries, was fast becoming a rare, fair tapestry of achievement.

“We--we were just considering Atawessu--the Star--as a symbol, when down you dropped from airdom!” Gheezies--Guardian--smiled again.

“With fresh rumors from the sky, eh? Well! to show that you don’t resent the intrusion--now it’s our turn to plead--won’t you please go on with the ceremony, and let us light the clouds with a memory of your candles?”

“Hardly--that! We’re too interested in--in the thrills you gave the ‘gawkers.’” Even a Guardian may stumble into slang under the spell of a?rial enthusiasm. “Our awarding of honors”--she touched the triple necklace of many-colored beads falling to her knees--“and of rank,” with a glance at little star-eyed Flamina, “may well be postponed. But, perhaps, we will let you ‘come in on our ceremony’ to--to the extent of singing you a song or two in return for your soaring thrills.”

And presently, with all the soft magic of welcoming motion of which a score of Earth Daughters were capable, there floated forth upon the fire-warmed dusk, beside the prismatic Council Fire:
“Whose hand above this flame is lifted,
Shall be with magic touch engifted,
To warm the hearts of lonely mortals,
Who stand within its open portals.
Whose house is dark and bare and cold,
Whose house is cold,
This is his own!”

“Ha! Our castles in the clouds are always bare--and often cold. We’re so glad you’ve made us free of yours!”

The younger aviator--Big Boy--drew a long breath; perhaps sometimes, in the vast empty spaces of those air-castles, occasionally dreary--he might, like Lieutenant Iver over-seas--recall the warm imagery of the Council Fire, its magic of sisterhood, when he missed the things that make life hum.

“Now! it’s your turn. You sing us a song!” pleaded Lilla, a fluttering Owlet, as the brown-clad maidens, light as wafted leaves, settled again into a sitting circle upon the sands.

“Well, I like that! I’ll tell the world!” laughingly. “To ask me to croak, like a flying frog, after such a smooth performance--as--that!... However, how does this go?
“‘Oh, Major! Oh, Major! Oh, Major!’ he said,
‘What shall we do with this flying cadet?
His ambitions are many,
His achievements are small,
He came through the Game with no wings at all!’”

“Good! Good! Bravo!” An enthusiastic clapping of maidens’ hands around the Council Fire. “But how did he get through without any wings?” hazarded one small voice.

“Because he failed to win them, his breast-wings, his insignia.” The R. M. A., Lieutenant Ned, touched the winged emblem upon his own breast. “Or perhaps he was grounded--dropped--while learning to fly, for some act of stupidity or dare-deviltry, say, making a pancake landing, as I might have done on the sands here, coming down flat, kerplunk, without easing her off at all--wrecking his machine.”

“Humph! I’m glad that we didn’t make a pancake landing over on Squawk Hill this morning--fall down flat upon our war-work. Then we’d have come through the Game with no wings at all, eh?” Sara bent whimsically towards t............