It was true that, before my rather abrupt departure from the Girl Guides, I had learned to start campfires, but I’d vowed that never again would I be caught dead trying to make a fire-bow from a stick and a shoestring, or rubbing two dry sticks together like a demented squirrel.

As noted, I had all the ingredients of a roaring fire—all, that is, except one.

Wherever there are paraffin lamps, I thought, paraffin can not be far away. I let down the hinged side panel of the caravan and there, to my delight, was a gallon of the stuff. I unscrewed the cap of the tin, splashed a bit of it onto the waiting firewood, and before you could say “Baden-Powell,” the teakettle was at a merry boil.

I was proud of myself. I really was.

“Flavia, the resourceful,” I was thinking. “Flavia, the all-round good girl.”

That sort of thing.

Up the steep steps of the caravan I climbed, tea in hand, balancing on my toes like a tightrope walker.

I handed the cup to the Gypsy and watched as she sipped at the steaming liquid.

“You were quick about it,” she said.

I shrugged humbly. No need to tell her about the paraffin.

“You found dry sticks in the locker?” she asked.

“No,” I said, “I …”

Her eyes grew wide with horror, and she held out the cup at arm’s length.

“Not the bushes! You didn’t cut the elder bushes?”

“Why, yes,” I said modestly. “It was no trouble at all, I—”

The cup flew from her hands with a clatter, and scalding tea went flying in all directions. She leapt from the bunk with startling speed and shrank herself back into the corner.

“Hilda Muir!” she cried, in an eerie and desolate wail that rose and fell like an air-raid siren. “Hilda Muir!” She was pointing to the door. I turned to look, but no one was there.