The Girls of Central High in Camp: or, the Old Professor's Secret

CHAPTER I
WHERE, OH, WHERE?

Field day was past and gone and the senior class of Central High, Centerport’s largest and most popular school, was thinking of little but white dresses, bouquets, and blue-ribboned diplomas.

The group of juniors, however, who had made the school’s athletic record for the year in the Girls’ Branch Athletic League, had other matters to discuss – and in their opinion they were matters of much greater moment.

“Boiled down,” stated Bobby Hargrew, “to its last common divisor, it is ‘Where, oh, where shall we spend our vacation?’”

They had decided some weeks before – Bobby herself, Laura Belding, Jess Morse, the Lockwood twins and Dr. Agnew’s daughter, Nellie – that a portion at least of the long summer vacation should be spent in camp. The mooted question was, where?

“No seashore resort,” Nellie said, with more decision than she usually displayed, for Nellie was of a timid and peaceful disposition.

“No,” agreed Laura Belding. “We’ll eschew the three S’s – ‘sun, sand, and ’skeeter-bites.’ That is the slogan of the seashore resort. Besides, it costs too much to get there.”

“That’s an important item to take into consideration, girls, if I’m to go,” said Jess Morse.

“I thought you were a millionairess?” laughed Bobby. “Where are the royalties from your play?”

“Those won’t begin till the producer puts the play on next season,” returned Jess, who had been fortunate in writing a play for amateur production good enough to interest a professional theatrical manager.

“Well, we’ve got to have you, Jess,” said Bobby (otherwise Clara) Hargrew. “For we’re depending upon your mother to play chaperon for the crowd, wherever we go.”

“Let’s find a quiet spot, then,” said Jess, eagerly. “Mother wants to write a book this summer and she says she would love to be somewhere where she doesn’t need to play the society game, or dress–”

“Back to the Garden of Eden for hers!” chuckled Bobby. “Eve didn’t have to dress – that is, not before Fall.”

“Aren’t you awful, Bobby?” cried one of the Lockwood twins – but which one it was who spoke could not have been sworn to by their most familiar friend. Dora and Dorothy looked just alike, dressed just alike, their voices were alike, and they usually acted in perfect harmony, too!

“Well,” pursued Laura Belding, “if we are going to spend the first weeks of the summer vacation in camp, we must decide upon the spot at once. Are we all agreed that we shall not go to the salt water?”

“Oh, yes!” cried her particular chum, Jess, or Josephine, Morse.

“None of the troubles of the seaside boarder for ours,” Bobby announced, hurriedly groping amid the rubbish in her skirt pocket and bringing forth a crumpled newspaper clipping. Bobby insisted upon having a pocket in almost every garment she wore (it was whispered that she wore pajamas at night for that reason) and no boy ever carried a more heterogeneous collection in his pockets than she did.

“See here! here’s one seaside visitor’s complaint,” and she intoned in a singsong voice the following doggerel:

 
“‘Why don’t red-headed girls get tanned?
Why does a collar wilt?
Why is the sea so near the land?
Why were the billows built?
Why is the “crawl-stroke” hard to learn?
Why is the sea bass shy?
Why is the nose the first to burn?
Why is the stinging fly?
 
 
“‘Why do mosquito nettings leak?
Why do all fishers lie?
Why does the grunter-fish always squeak?
Why do they feed us on clam-pie?
Why does the boardwalk hurt the feet?
Why is the seaweed green?
Why can’t a bathing suit look neat?
Why won’t straw hats stay clean?
“‘Why–’”
 

“Stop it!” shrieked Jess, covering her ears. “How dare you read such preposterous stuff?”

“‘Whys to the wise,’ you know,” giggled Bobby.

“I vote we refuse to allow Bobby to go camping with the crowd unless she positively refrains from quoting verse on any and every occasion,” drawled Nellie.

“Hardhearted creature!” cried Dora Lockwood. “Poor Bobs couldn’t live without that ’scape-gap.”

“By the way, girls,” Laura Belding asked, briskly, “are we going to let any other girls join this camping party – or is it to be just us six?”

“Who else wants to go?” demanded Bobby, quickly.

“Lil Pendleton–”

“Always that!” ejaculated Bobby, in disgust.

“Why, Bobby!” cried Dorothy. “I thought you and Lilly kissed and made up?”

“Oh, yes – we did,” grunted the smaller girl. “That is, we kissed. Lil was already made up.”

“Now, Bobby!” admonished Laura.

“That’s horrid of you, Bobby,” Nellie declared. “You are incorrigible.”

Yet they all had to laugh. Bobby Hargrew was just a cut-up!

“I’m worse than the long word you called me, Nell,” said little Miss Hargrew. “But we’re not going to have any such spoil-sport as Lil Pendleton along.”

“But Chet and Lance say that Prettyman Sweet has begged so hard to go camping with them, that they’re going to take him – just for the fun they will have at his expense, I s’pose,” said Laura.

“That’s why Lil wants to go camping,” Dora said. “She’s got such an awful crush on Pretty Sweet that she wants to do everything he does.”

“That dude!” scoffed Bobby.

“He and Lil make a good pair,” said Jess.

“Wait a minute!” cried Dorothy Lockwood. “Where are the boys going to camp this year, Laura?”

“On the shore of Lake Dunkirk, somewhere.”

“Say, Mother Wit,” cried Bobby, addressing by her universal nickname the leader of the crowd of Central High girls. “Wouldn’t it be fun to camp near – That is, providing the boys are all nice.”

“Well, beside Chet and Lance and Pretty Sweet, there’ll be Short and Long, Reddy Butts and Arthur Hobbs, anyway. I don’t know how many more,” Laura said. “But you know that Chet and Lance wouldn’t have any but nice fellows in their crowd.”

“Barring Pretty,” said Bobby, “they are all good chaps – so far. We wouldn’t mind having them for neighbors.

“And why can’t we?” she added, suddenly. “Why, girls! Father Tom has recently bought into the Rocky River Lumber Company and that company owns Acorn Island.”

“Acorn Island? Great!” declared Jess.

“That’s the big island in Lake Dunkirk, you know,” explained Laura to the Lockwood twins, who looked puzzled.

“Acorn Island is just the finest kind of a place for a camp,” said the enthusiastic Jess. “It’s just like a wilderness.”

“Right! The company isn’t going to cut the timber on the island till next winter. Father Tom says so.”

“I’ve been to picnics on Acorn Island,” said Nellie Agnew. “It is a beautiful spot.”

“Acorn Island it is, then,” cried Bobby. “Hurrah! We’ll spend our vacation there!”

She almost shouted this declaration. The girls had been lingering to talk in the high school yard and were now at the gate. Nellie suddenly tugged at Laura’s sleeve and whispered:

“Look there! what do you suppose is the matter with Professor Dimp?”

Bobby spun around at the word, having heard the sibilant whisper. She likewise stared at the rusty-coated gentleman who had just passed the gate, having come from the main entrance of the Central High building.

“Gee!” exclaimed the slangy Bobby. “What’s got Old Dimple now? What have I ever done to him – except massacre the Latin language? – and that’s a ‘dead one,’ anyway!”

The Latin teacher – the bane of all careless and ill-prepared boys and girls of the Latin class – was a slightly built, stoop-shouldered man who never seemed to own a new coat, and was as forgetful as a person really could be, and be allowed to go about without a keeper.

He often passed the members of his class on the street without knowing them at all; the boys said you might as well bow to a post as to Old Dimple!

But here he had taken particular notice of Bobby Hargrew; indeed, he stopped to turn around and glare right at her – just as though she had said something particularly offensive to him as he passed the group.

“Goodness!” murmured Jess. “If you’re not in trouble with Gee Gee, Bobs, you manage to get one of the other instructors down on you. What have you done to the professor?”

“Nothing, I declare!” said Bobby, plaintively.

“If you’d murdered his grandmother he couldn’t look any harder at you,” chuckled Dora Lockwood.

The professor suddenly saw that he had disturbed the party of schoolgirls. He actually flushed, and turned hurriedly to move away.

As he did so he pulled a big, blue-bordered handkerchief from the tail pocket of his frock-coat. That pocket was notably a “catch-all” for anything the poor, absent-minded professor wished to save, or to which he took a fancy. Once Short and Long (otherwise a very short boy named Long) dropped a kitten into the professor’s tail pocket and the gentleman did not discover it until he reached for his bandana to wipe his moist brow when he stood up to lecture his Latin class.

However, it was nothing like a kitten that followed the blue-bordered handkerchief out of the voluminous skirt-pocket. A crumpled clipping from a newspaper fell to the walk as Professor Dimp strode away.

Bobby Hargrew’s quick eye noted the clipping first, and she darted to retrieve it. She came back more slowly, reading the printed slip.

“What is it, Bob?” asked Jess, idly.

“Why, Clara!” exclaimed Laura Belding, “aren’t you going to give it back to him?”

“Look here, girls!” ejaculated the excited and thoughtless Bobby, looking up from the newspaper clipping. “What do you think of this? Old Dimple must be secretly interested in modern crime as well as in the murdered ancient languages. This is all about those forgeries in the Merchants and Miners Bank, of Albany. You know, they say a young fellow – almost a boy – did them; and he can’t be found and they don’t know what he did with the money obtained by the circulating of the false paper.”

“My! Our Aunt Dora lost some securities. She just wrote us about it,” Dorothy Lockwood said, eagerly.

“And he wasn’t much but a boy!” murmured Nellie. But Laura said, sharply: “Bobby! that’s not nice. Run after Professor Dimp and give the clipping to him.”

“Gee! you’re so awfully particular,” grumbled the harum-scarum. But she started after the shabby figure of the Latin teacher and caught up with him before Professor Dimp had reached the end of the next block – for Bobby Hargrew had taken the palm in the quarter mile dash at the Girls’ Branch League Field Day and there were few girls at Central High who could compete with her as a sprinter.

When she returned to the group of her friends, still eagerly discussing the plane for their camping trip, her footsteps lagged. Laura noticed the curious expression on the smaller girl’s face.

“What has happened you, Bobby?” she demanded.

“Why! I’m so surprised,” gasped Bobby. “I must have done something awful to Old Dimple. When he saw what it was I handed him, he grabbed it and just snarled at me:

“‘Where did you get that, Miss Hargrew?’

“And when I told him, he looked as though he didn’t believe me and had to search his pocket to make sure he had dropped it. And he looked at me so fiercely and suspiciously. Goodness! I don’t know what I’ve done to him.”

“He’s odd, you know,” suggested Mother Wit.

“That’s all right,” said Bobby, somewhat tartly; “but what the mischief he wants to bother himself about where we go camping–”

“What do you mean, Bobs?” demanded Jess, while the other girls all looked amazed.

“Why he said to me just now,” answered the disturbed girl, “‘you girls better keep away from Acorn Island. That’s no place for you to go camping.’ And then walked right off with his old clipping, and without giving me a chance to ask him what he meant,” concluded Bobby Hargrew.

CHAPTER II
PLANS FOR THE SUMMER

Bobby Hargrew came to school the next morning with rather a sour face for her. “What’s the matter, dear?” asked Nell Agnew, sympathetically.

“I wish I were a bird,” grumbled Bobby.

“So you could soar into the circumambient ether and leave all mundane things below?” queried Jess Morse, with a chuckle.

“No,” said Bobby, in disgust. “So I wouldn’t have a toothache. I was up with one of my old grinders half the night.”

“Have it pulled,” suggested Laura.

“Say!” cried Bobby. “That’s the easiest thing in the world to say and the hardest to do. And you know it, Mother Wit! You can have an old toothache that will make you feel like committing suicide; and when you get to the dentist shop you wish you had committed suicide before you got there,” and jolly little Bobby began to grin again.

“Suicide is a serious matter,” said Nellie, gravely.

“Surely, surely,” the cut-up replied, dropping her voice to a gruesome pitch. “Listen!

 
“‘Beside a sewer a man lay dead,
A dagger in his side;
The coroner’s decision read:
”He died of suicide.“
 
 
‘Now if this man at home in bed,
Had in this manner died,
Then could the coroner have said:
“He died of homicide”?’
 

“Never joke about serious things, Nell.”

“Hush, Bobby!” commanded Laura Belding. “Tell us, do, if your father has agreed to let us go camping on Acorn Island?”

“Of course,” replied the younger girl. “And he says there is a cabin there that can be made tight for ten dollars. It’s all right to camp under canvas; but if a big storm should come up he says we’d be glad of that cabin.”

“Great!” announced Jess Morse.

“The cabin shall be your mother’s particular shelter,” said Laura. “Eh, girls?”

“If she is kind enough to go with us,” said Nellie, “she should have the very best of everything.”

“She can have my share of the wood ants and red spiders,” chuckled Bobby. “But it’s all right, girls. Father Tom says we can have the island to ourselves. And believe me: this bunch of girls of Central High will sure have a good time!”

Which was a prophecy likely to be fulfilled, if the past adventures of these same girls were any criterion of the future.

For more than a year now the girls of Central High, together with those of the other two high schools of Centerport and the high schools of Lumberport and Keyport – all five – had been deeply interested in the Girls’ Branch League athletics. In following the various games and exercises approved by their instructor, Mrs. Case these six girls introduced above, had engaged in many and varied enterprises and adventures.

In “The Girls of Central High; Or, Rivals for All Honors,” the first volume of this series, Laura Belding (“Mother Wit”) was enabled to interest one of the wealthiest men of Centerport in girls’ athletics so that he gave a large sum toward the preparation of a handsome athletic field and gymnasium for Central High.

The second volume is entitled: “The Girls of Central High on Lake Luna,” and the third is “The Girls of Central High at Basket Ball” – the titles of which tell their own story.

“The Girls of Central High on the Stage,” the fourth volume, tells of the writing and first production by her mates of Jess Morse’s successful play, while the fifth of the series is entitled: “The Girls of Central High on Track and Field; Or, Champions of the School League.”

Laura, Jess, Nellie, the Lockwood Twins and Bobby were girls of dissimilar characters (that is, if we count Dora and Dorothy as “one and indivisible” like the Union of the States). Laura’s brother Chetwood, his chum, Lance Darby, Billy Long, and some of the other Central High boys were usually entangled in the girls’ adventures – sufficiently to give spice to the incidents.

So, all considered, it was only reasonable that the girls should have eagerly agreed upon the site of their summer camp – Acorn Island. They knew that the boys would probably have their own camp on one shore or the other of the lake, and within sight of the island.

Chet, who seldom failed to walk home with Jess and carry her books – unless the gymnasium called the girls after the school session – and Lance, who filled like office of faithful squire to Laura, joined the girl chums on this afternoon.

“Got it all planned, have you?” Chet said. “I hear Acorn Island is going to be overrun with a gang of female Indians right after graduation.”

“We have got to go up there to keep watch of you boys,” laughed his sister. “But it’s nice of Bobby’s father to let us camp there.”

“Pull – sheer pull,” grumbled Lance. “We fellows tried our best to get permission to camp on the Island.”

“Well,” said Jess, demurely. “You can come to the island visiting. It will be perfectly proper. My mother says she will go to chaperon us, now that she knows there is a cabin there.”

“And Bobby’s father is going to send a couple of men up from Lumberport to make the cabin tight and fix things up a little for us. We’ll pitch our tents on the knoll right by the cabin,” Laura said, eagerly.

“Pretty spot,” agreed Chet. “We’ll probably have our camp in sight of it and the lake between the south shore and the island is only about two miles broad.”

“Oh! we’ll have a bully time,” his chum agreed.

“Say!” Chet said, suddenly, addressing Lance Darby. “What was professor Dimp saying to you about camping? I heard a word or two. Something about going to the island?”

“Why! I forgot to tell you about that,” returned Lance, quickly, while the two girls cast enquiring glances at each other. “Old Dimple is certainly an odd stick.”

“As odd as Dick’s hat-band,” agreed Chet.

“And no-end forgetful. He’s been worse than ever lately. There certainly is something worrying him.”

“You boys,” laughed Jess.

“Something worse than boys,” Lance returned. “It’s a shame how forgetful he is. Say! did you hear what he did at Mr. Sharp’s the other night?”

“No,” said the others, in chorus.

Lance began to chuckle. Mr. Franklin Sharp was the principal of Central High, and was very much admired by all the pupils; while Professor Dimp, because of his harshness and his queer ways, was the butt of more than a few jokes.

“It was night before last when it rained so hard,” resumed Lance. “He was there going over Latin exercises or something, with the Doctor. Mrs. Sharp asked him to stay all night, when it came on so hard to rain, and the old Prof thanked her and said he would.

“Mr. Sharp went into his office to do something or other and left Old Dimple in the library for a while. The family lost track of him then. Right in the middle of the hardest downpour, about eleven o’clock, the front door bell rang, and Mr. Sharp went to the door.

“There was Old Dimple, under a dripping umbrella, his pants wet to the knees, and his pajamas and toothbrush under his arm–”

“Oh, Lance!” ejaculated Laura. “That is too much to believe.”

“Fact. He’d gone home for his nightclothes. I got it from our hired girl and she got it from Mrs. Sharp’s maid. So, there you have it!”

“But you didn’t tell us what the old Prof was saying to you about camping,” reminded Chet, when the general laugh was over.

“Why! that’s so. And it was odd, too, that he should take any interest in what we fellows were going to do this summer.”

“What about it?” Jess asked.

“He wanted to know if we were going to pitch our camp, too, on Acorn Island? He seemed to know you girls were going there.”

“How odd!” murmured Laura and Jess, together. And the latter added: “Bobby said he seemed mad when he found out we were going to Acorn Island.”

“Well,” drawled Lance, “he seemed sort of relieved when I told him we fellows were going to camp on the mainland.”

“Funny he should trouble his head about us out of school hours at all,” Chet said again.

His sister made no further comment upon the professor’s queer actions. Nevertheless her curiosity was aroused regarding the old instructor’s sudden interest in anything beside Latin exercises and Greek roots.

CHAPTER III
VISITORS’ DAY

The afternoon preceding the closing exercises of Central High was Visitors’ Day at the girls’ gymnasium. This was an entirely different affair from the recent Field Day when Laura Belding and her particular friends had so well distinguished themselves.

On that occasion the general public had been invited. Visitors’ Day might better have been called “Mothers’ Day.” Mrs. Case personally invited all those mothers who had shown little interest, or positive objection, to their daughters’ athletic activities.

For to the Centerport ladies the fact that their daughters were being trained “like prize-ring fighters,” as one good but misled mother had said in a letter to the newspaper, was not only a novel course but was considered of doubtful value.

“And you must come, Mother,” begged Laura, when Mrs. Belding seemed inclined to make excuses. Mrs. Belding was one of the mothers who could not approve of her daughter’s interest in athletics.

“Really, Laura, I am not sure that I should enjoy myself seeing you crawl about those ladders like a spider – or climbing ropes like a sailor – or turning on a trapeze like a monkey – or otherwise making yourself ridiculous.”

“Oh, Mother!” half-laughed Laura. Yet she was a little hurt, too.

“Aw, Mother, don’t sidestep your plain duty,” said Chet, his eyes twinkling.

“Chetwood! You know very well that I do not approve of many of these modern dances. I certainly do not ‘sidestep’”–

“That isn’t a dance, Mother,” giggled Laura.

Her husband chuckled at the other end of the table. “My dear,” he said, suavely, “you should keep up with the times–”

“No, thank you. I have no desire to. Keeping up with the times, as you call it, has made my son speak a language entirely unintelligible to my ear, and has made my daughter an exponent of muscular exercises of which I cannot approve.”

“Pshaw!” said her husband, easily. “Basketball, and running, and rowing, and the exercise she gets at that gymnasium, aren’t going to hurt Mother Wit.”

“There you go!” exclaimed his wife. “You have begun to apply to Laura an appellation which she has gained since all this disturbance over athletics among the girls, has arisen.

“I can no more than expect,” went on Mrs. Belding, seriously, “that, dissatisfied with basketball and the like, the girls will become baseball and football – what do you call them, Chetwood? Fans?”

“Quite right, mother,” Laura hastened to answer instead of her brother. “And all we girls of Central High are fans already when it comes to baseball and football. I’d like to belong to a baseball team, myself, for one–”

“Laura!” gasped her mother, while her father and Chet burst out laughing.

“It’s the finest game in the world,” declared Laura, stoutly.

“Hear! hear!” from Chet.

“I’ve been to see the games a lot with father Saturday afternoons,” began Laura, when her mother interposed:

“Indeed? That is why you are so eager always to spend your forenoons with your father on Saturday?”

“Oh, Mother! I really do help father in the jewelry-store – don’t I, Dad?”

“Couldn’t get along without you, daughter,” said Mr. Belding, stoutly.

“And he always takes me for a nice bite in a restaurant,” pursued the girl, “and then if there’s a game, we go to see it.”

“Runaways!” said Mrs. Belding, shaking an admonishing finger at them. “So you encourage her in these escapades, do you, Mr. Belding?”

“Quite so, Mother,” he returned. “You’re behind the times. Girls are different nowadays – in open practise, at least – from what they were in our day. Of course, I remember when I first saw you–”

“That will do!” exclaimed Mrs. Belding, flushing very prettily, while the children laughed. “We will not rake up old stories, if you please.”

Any reference to the occasion at which her husband hinted, usually brought his wife “to time,” as Chet slangily expressed it. She agreed to be present at the girls’ gymnasium on that last day when the girls used the paraphernalia as they pleased, with Mrs. Case standing by to direct, or admonish, or advise.

Mrs. Belding found in the gallery overlooking the big gymnasium floor many of her neighbors, church friends, or fellow club-members.

“I’ve been trying to get here for months,” one stout lady confided to the Market Street jeweler’s wife; “but it does seem to me I never have a minute to spare. But Lluella says that I must come now, for the term is ending. That’s Lluella over yonder jumping on that mat. Isn’t she quick on her feet?”

“Grace is such a reckless child,” complained the lady on Mrs. Belding’s other side. “She’s her father all over again – and he’s got the quickest temper of any man I ever saw. Gets over it right away, you know; but it’s a trial to have a man get mad because the coffee’s muddy of a morning.”

“Oh, I know all about that,” sighed the fleshy lady, windily.

“I don’t suppose there’s really any danger of the children getting hurt here, Mrs. Belding?” proceeded the thin mother.

“I believe not. Laura says there is no danger–”

“Oh, your Laura is a regular athlete!” interrupted the fat woman. “My Lluella says she is just wonderful.”

“So does my Grace,” declared the thin lady on the other side. “She says there’s nobody like ‘Mother Wit,’ as she calls Laura.”

“I think there is no danger,” murmured Mrs. Belding, not sure whether she was glad or sorry that her daughter was so popular.

“Oh, Mrs. Belding! are you here?” broke in rather a shrill voice from the rear. “I told Lily I would come to-day; but really, I hardly knew whether it was the thing to approve of this gymnasium business–”

Mrs. Pendleton’s voice trailed off as it usually did before she completed a sentence. She was a small, extremely vivacious, black-eyed woman, much overdressed, and carrying a lorgnette with which she eyed the crowd of girlish figures on the floor below.

“Of course,” she murmured to Mrs. Belding, “if you approve–”

“Where is Grace now?” cried the thin lady, suddenly. “Mercy! See where she has climbed to. Do you suppose they can get her without a ladder?”

Grace, a thin, wiry child of the wriggling type, had successfully clambered up the rope almost to the beam overhead and was now surveying the gallery with lofty compassion, which included a lively appreciation of her mother’s uneasiness.

“Oh, Grace!” shrilled the thin woman. “Get down this instant! Or do you want me to bring you a ladder?”

An appreciative giggle arose from some of the girls below. Grace turned rather red around her ears, and began to descend. It was one thing to make her mother marvel; she did not want her “act” to be turned to ridicule.

“They look real pretty – now don’t they?” admitted Mrs. Pendleton, loftily, after surveying the gymnasium for some time through her lorgnette. “Lily’s dress cost us a deal of trouble. But she looks well in it. She’s well developed for her age and – thank goodness! – she has a chic way with her.

“I thought we never would get the suit to fit her. And she changed her shoes three times,” added the society matron. “Finally I told her if she was going to have nervous prostration getting ready to take physical culture, she’d better wait and take it when she was convalescent.”

“I hope Lluella will be careful of her hands,” said the fleshy lady on Mrs. Belding’s right. “She’s always bruising or cutting her fingers. Just like her aunt. Her aunt always had to wear gloves doing her housework.”

“There! they are going to march,” cried the thin lady, as Mrs. Case blew her whistle and the girl on the rope slid the last few feet to the floor. “Grace is down, thank goodness!”

“Her music teacher says Grace’s ear is a regular gift – she keeps such good time.”

“I’m sure no sensible parent would ever have bought those ears,” whispered Mrs. Pendleton to Mrs. Belding. “They must have been a gift,” for those organs on the agile Grace were painfully prominent.

“But she had such a pretty smile when she looked up at her mother just now,” whispered the kind-hearted Mrs. Belding.

“That reminds me,” said the society matron – though why it should have reminded her nobody knows! “That reminds me, my Lily is crazy to go camping – positively crazy!”

“I know,” sighed Mrs. Belding. “Laura is determined, too. And her father approves and has overruled all my objections.”

“Oh, it’s not that with me at all,” said Mrs. Pendleton, briskly. “I’m glad enough to have the child go. She’s too much advanced for her age, anyway. If she spends this summer at Newport, and Bar Harbor, and one or two other places where I positively must appear, I’ll never be able to get her back into school this fall.

“It ages a mother so to have a growing daughter – and one that is so forward as Lily,” said this selfish lady, fretfully. “Lily thinks she is grown up now. No. I approve of her going with a lot of little girls into camp. And she wants to go with your Laura’s crowd, Mrs. Belding.”

“I’m sure – Laura would be pleased,” said Mrs Belding, sweetly, without an idea that she was laying up trouble in store for Mother Wit.

“Oh, then, I can leave it with you, dear Mrs. Belding?” cried Mrs. Pendleton, with uncanny eagerness. “You will arrange it?”

“Why – er – I presume Laura and her friends would have no objection to another of their schoolmates joining them. I understand Mrs. Morse will chaperon them–”

“And quite a proper person for that office, too,” agreed Mrs. Pendleton. “I presume they will take along a maid.”

“Oh! I do not know,” said Mrs. Belding, beginning to feel somewhat worried now. “I imagine the girls expect to do for themselves–”

“Oh! I will send a maid with Lily. At least, I will pay the wages of one who will do for all the girls – in a way.”

She bustled away to find Lily after the march. Mrs. Belding waited for her daughter in more or less trepidation. It had suddenly crossed her mind that Lily Pendleton was seldom at her house with the friends that Mother Wit gathered about her.