CHAPTER VIITHE HOUSE RAISING
The sun was scarcely up in the morning when Eleanor turned out and aroused the girls.
“We’ve got to get our own breakfast out of the way in a hurry, girls,” she said, “When country people say early, they mean early—EARLY! And we want to have coffee and cakes ready for these good friends of ours when they do come. A good many of them will come from a long way off and I think they’ll all be glad to have a little something extra before they start work. It won’t hurt us a bit to think so, and act accordingly anyhow.”
So within half an hour the Pratts and the Camp Fire Girls had had their own breakfasts, the dishes were washed, and great pots of coffee were boiling on the fires that had been built. And, just as the fragrant aroma arose on the cool air,the first of the teams that brought the workers came in sight, with jovial Jud Harkness driving.
“My, but that coffee smells good, Miss Mercer!” he roared. “Say, I’m not strong for all these city fixin’s in the way of food. Plain home cookin’ serves me well enough, but there’s one thing where you sure do lay all over us, and that’s in makin’ coffee. Give me a mug of that, Mis’ Pratt, an’ I’ll start work.”
And from the way in which the coffee and the cakes, the latter spread with good maple syrup from trees that grew near Cranford, began to disappear, it was soon evident that Eleanor had made no mistake, and that the breakfast that she had had prepared for the workers would by no means be wasted.
“It does me good to see you men eat this way,” she said, laughing. “That’s one thing we don’t do properly in the city—eat. We peck at a lot of things, instead of eating a few plain ones, and a lot of them. And I’ll bet that you men will work all the harder for this extra breakfast.”
“Just you watch and see!” bellowed Jud. “I’m boss here to-day, ma’am, and I tell you I’m some nigger driver. Ain’t I, boys?”
But he accompanied the threat with a jovial wink, and it was easy to see that these men liked and respected him, and were only too willing to look up to him as a leader in the work of kindness in which they were about to engage.
“I don’t know why all you boys are so good to me, Jud,” said Mrs. Pratt, brokenly. “I can’t begin to find words to thank you, even.”
“Don’t try, Mis’ Pratt,” said Jud, looking remarkably fierce, though he was winking back something that looked suspiciously like a tear. “I guess we ain’t none of us forgot Tom Pratt—as good a friend as men ever had! Many’s the time he’s done kind things for all of us! I guess it’d be pretty poor work if some of his friends couldn’t turn out to help his wife and kids when they’re in trouble.”
“He knows what you’re doing, I’m sure ofthat,” she answered. “And God will reward you, Jud Harkness!”
Heartily as the men ate, however, they spent little enough time at the task. Jud Harkness allowed them what he thought was a reasonable time, and then he arose, stretched his great arms, and roared out his commands.
“Come on, now, all hands to work!” he bellowed. “We’ve got to get all this rubbish cleared out, then we’ll have clean decks for building.”
And they fell to with a will. In a surprisingly short space of time the men who had plunged into the ruined foundations of the house had torn out the remaining beams and rafters, and had flung the heap of rubbish that filled the cellar on to the level ground. While some of the men did this, others piled the rubbish on to wagons, and it was carted away and dumped. The fire, however, had really lightened their task for them.
“That fire was so hot and so fierce,” said Eleanor, as she watched them working, “thatthere’s less rubbish, than if the things had been only half burned.”
“I’ve seen fires in the city,” said Margery, “or, at least, houses after a fire. And it really looked worse than this, because there’d be a whole lot of things that had started to burn. Then the firemen came along, to put out the fire, and, though the things weren’t really any good, they had to be carted away.”
“Yes, but this fire made a clean sweep wherever it started at all. Ashes are easier to handle than sticks and half ruined pieces of furniture. As long as it had to come, I guess it’s a good thing that it was such a hot blaze.”
The work of clearing away, therefore, which had to be done, of course, before any actual building could be begun, was soon accomplished.
“We’re going to build just the way Tom Pratt did,” said Jud Harkness. He was the principal carpenter and builder of Lake Dean, and a master workman. Many of the camps and cottages on the lake had been built byhim, and he was, therefore, accustomed to such work.
“You mean you’re going to put up a square house?” said Eleanor.
“Yes, ma’am, just a square house, with a hall running right through from the front to the back, and an extension in the rear for a kitchen—just a shack, that will be. Two floors—two rooms on each side of the hall on each floor. That’ll give them eight rooms to start with, beside the kitchen.”
“That’ll be fine, and it will really be the easiest thing to do, too.”
“That’s what we’re figuring, ma’am. You see, it’ll be just as it was when Tom Pratt first built here, except that he only put up one story at first. Then, as Mis’ Pratt gets things going again, she can add to it, and if she don’t get along as fast as she expects, why, we’ll lend her a hand whenever she needs it.”
“How on earth could you get all the lumber you need ready so quickly? That’s one thing Icouldn’t understand. The work is not so difficult to manage, of course. But the wood—that’s what’s been puzzling me.”
Jud grinned.
“Well, the truth is, ma’am, I expect to have a little argument about that yet with a city chap that’s building a house on the lake. I’ve got the job of putting it up for him, and if it hadn’t been for this fire coming along, I’d have started work day before yesterday.”
“Oh, and this is the lumber for his house?”
“You guessed it right, ma’am! He’ll be wild, I do believe, because there’s no telling when I’ll get the next lot of lumber through.”
“You say the fire stopped you from going ahead with his house?”
“Yes. You see all of us had to turn out when it got so near to Cranford. My house is safe, I do believe. I’m mighty scared of fire, ma’am, and I’ve always figured on having things fixed so’s a fire would have a pretty hard time reaching my property. But of course I had to jump in tohelp my neighbors—wouldn’t be much profit about having the only house left standing in town, would there?”
Eleanor laughed.
“I guess not!” she said. “But what a lucky thing for Mrs. Pratt that you happened to have just the sort of wood she needed!”
“Oh, well, we’d have managed somehow. Of course, it makes it easier, but we’d have juggled things around some way, even if this chap’s plans didn’t fit her foundations. As it happens, though, they do. Old Tom Pratt had a mighty well-built house here.”
“Well, I’m quite sure that just as good a one is going up in its place.”
Jud Harkness watched the work of getting out the last of the rubbish. Then he went over to the cleared foundations, and in a moment he was putting up the first of the four corner posts, great beams that looked stout enough to hold up a far bigger house than the one they were to support.
All morning the work went on merrily. AsEleanor had predicted, and Bessie, too, there was plenty for the girls to do. The sun grew hotter and hotter, and the men were glad of the cooling drinks that were so liberally provided for them.
“This is fine!” said Jud Harkness, as he quaffed a great drink of lemonade, well iced. “My, but it’s a pleasure to work when it’s made so nice for you! I tell you, having these cool drinks here is worth an extra hour’s work, morning and afternoon. And what’s that—just the nails I want? I’ll give you a job as helper, young woman!”
That remark was addressed to Bessie, who flushed with pleasure at the thought that she was playing a part, however small, in the building of the house. And, indeed, the girls all did their part, and their help was royally welcomed by the men.
Quickly the skeleton of the house took form, and by noon, when work was to be knocked off for an hour, the whole framework was up.
“I simply wouldn’t have believed it, if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes!” said Eleanor. “It’s the most wonderful thing I ever saw!”
“Oh, shucks!” said Jud, embarrassed by such, praise. “There’s lots of us—I don’t think we’ve done so awful well. But it does look kind of nice, don’t it?”
“It’s going to be a beautiful house,” said Mrs. Pratt. “And to think of what the place looked like yesterday! Well, Jud Harkness, I haven’t any words to tell you what I really think, and that’s all there is to it!”
For an hour or more Margery and her helpers had been busy at the big fire. At Eleanor’s suggestion two of the men had stopped work on the house long enough to put up a rough, long table with benches at the sides, and now the table was groaning with the fine dinner that Margery had prepared.
“Good solid food—no fancy fixings!” Eleanor had decreed. “These men burn up a tremendous lot of energy in work, and we’ve got to give themgood food to replace it. So we don’t want a lot of trumpery things, such as we like!”
She had enforced a literal obedience, too. There were great joints of corned beef, red and savory; pots of cabbage, and huge mounds of boiled potatoes. Pots of mustard were scattered along the table, and each man had a pitcher of fine, fresh milk, and a loaf of bread, with plenty of butter. And for dessert there was a luxury—the only fancy part of the meal.
Eleanor had had a whispered conference with Tom Pratt early in the day, as the result of which he had hitched up and driven into Cranford, to return with two huge tubs of ice-cream. He had brought a couple of boxes of cigars, too, and when the meal was over, and the men were getting out their pipes, Eleanor had gone around among them.
“Try one of these!” she had urged. “I know they’re good—and I know that when men are working hard they enjoy a first-class smoke.”
The cigars made a great hit.
“By Golly! There’s nothing she don’t thinkof, that Miss Mercer!” said Jud Harkness appreciatively, as he lit up, and sent great clouds of blue smoke in the air. “Boys, if we don’t do a tiptop job on that house to finish it off this afternoon we ought to be hung for a lot of ungrateful skunks. Eh?”
There was a deep-throated shout of approval for that sentiment, and, after a few minutes of rest, during which the cigars were enjoyed to the utmost, Jud rose and once more sounded the call to work.
“I’ve heard men in the city say that after a heavy meal in the middle of the day, they couldn’t work properly in the afternoon,” said Eleanor, as she watched the men go about their work, each seeming to know his part exactly. “It doesn’t seem to be so with these men, though, does it? I guess that in the city men who work in offices don’t use their bodies enough—they don’t get enough exercise, and they eat as much as if they did.”
“I love cooking for men who enjoy their foodthe way these do,” said Margery happily. “They don’t have to say it’s good—they show they think so by the way they eat. It’s fine to think that people really enjoy what you do. I don’t care how hard I work if I think that.”
“Well, you certainly had an appreciative lot of eaters to-day, Margery.”
As the shadows lengthened and the sun began to go down toward the west the house rapidly assumed the look it would have when it was finished. A good deal of the work, of course, was roughly done. There was no smoothing off of rough edges, but all that could be done later.
And then, as the end of the task drew near, so that the watchers on the ground could see what the finished house would be like, Mrs. Pratt, already overwhelmed by delight at the kindness of her neighbors, had a new surprise that pleased and touched her, if possible, even more than what had gone before. A new procession of wagons came into sight in the road, and this time each was driven by a woman.
And what a motley collection of stuff they did bring, to be sure! Beds and mattresses, bedding, chairs, tables, a big cook stove for the kitchen, pots and pans, china and glass, knives and forks—everything that was needed for the house.
“We just made a collection of all the things we could spare, Sarah Pratt,” said sprightly little Mrs. Harkness, a contrast indeed to her huge husband, who could easily lift her with one hand, so small was she. “They ain’t much on looks, but they’re all whole and clean, and you can use them until you have a chance to stock up again. Now, don’t you go trying to thank us—it’s nothing to do!”
“Nothing?” exclaimed Mrs. Pratt. “Sue Harkness, don’t you dare say that! Why, it means that I’ll have a real home to-night for my children—we’ll be jest as comfortable as we were before the fire! I don’t believe any woman ever had such good neighbors before!”
Long before dark the house was finished, as far as it was to be finished that day. And, as soonas the men had done their work, their wives and the Camp Fire Girls descended on the new house with brooms and pails, and soon all the shavings and the traces of the work had been banished. Then all hands set to work arranging the furniture, and by the time supper was ready the house was completely furnished.
“Well,” said Eleanor, standing happily in the parlor, “this certainly does look homelike!”
There was even an old parlor organ. Pictures were on the wall; a good rag carpet was on the floor, and, while the furniture was not new, and had seen plenty of hard service, it was still good enough to use. The Pratt home had certainly risen like a Phoenix from its ashes. And tired but happy, all those who had contributed to the good work sat down to a bountiful supper.
CHAPTER VIIION THE MARCH AGAIN
After supper, when the others who had done the good work of rebuilding were ready to go, all the girls of the Camp Fire lined up in front of the new house and sped them on their way with a cheer and the singing of the Wo-he-lo cry.
“Listen to that echo!” said Dolly, as their song was brought back to them. “I didn’t notice that last night. Is it always that way?”
“Always,” said Tom Pratt. “Folks come here sometimes to yell and hear the echo shout back at them.”
“Good!” cried Eleanor. “That supplies a need I’ve been thinking of all day!”
“What’s that, Miss Mercer?” asked Mrs. Pratt.
“Why, if you are going into the business of supplying eggs and butter to the summer folk at the lake and to others in the city, you’ll need aname for your farm. Why not call it Echo Farm? That’s a good name, and in your case it means something, you see.”
“Whatever you say, Miss Mercer! Though I’d never thought of having a name for the place before.”
“Lots of things are going to be different for you now, Mrs. Pratt. You’re going to be a business woman, and to make a lot of money, you know. Yes, that will look well on your boxes. When I get back to the city I’ll have a friend of mine make a drawing and put that name with it, to be put on your boxes, and on all the paper you will use for writing letters.”
“Dear me, it’s going to be splendid, Miss Mercer! Why, that fire is going to turn out to be the best thing that ever happened to us, I’m sure!”
“I think we can often turn our misfortunes into blessings if we take them the right way, Mrs. Pratt. The thing to do is always to try to look on the bright side, and, no matter how blackthings seem, to try to see if there isn’t some way that we can turn everything to account.”
“Well, I would never have done it if you hadn’t come along, Miss Mercer. You gave us all courage in the first place, and then you got Jud Harkness and all the others to come and help me this way.”
“Oh, they’d have done it themselves, as soon as they heard. I didn’t suggest a thing—I just told them the news, and they thought of everything else all by themselves. The only thing I thought of was using your farm so that it would really pay you.”
“Now that you’ve told us how, it seems so easy that I wonder I never thought of it myself.”
“Well, lots and lots of farmers just waste their land and themselves, Mrs. Pratt. You’re not the only one. My father has a farm, and in his section he’s done his level best to make the regular farmers see that there are new ways of farming, just as there are new ways of doing everything else.”
“That’s what my poor husband always said. He had all sorts of new-fangled ideas, as I used to call them. Maybe he was right, too. But he didn’t have money enough to try them and see how they’d do, though we always made a good living off this place.”
“Well, the advantage of my idea is that you don’t need much money to give it a trial, and if you don’t succeed, you won’t lose much.”
“I think we’d be pretty stupid if we didn’t succeed, after the fine start you’ve given us, and the way you’ve told me what to do.”
“Well, I think so myself,” said Eleanor, with a frank laugh. “And I know you’re not stupid—not a bit of it! It’s going to be hard work, but I’m sure you’ll succeed. You’ll be able to hire someone to do most of the work for you before long, I think, and then you’ll have to have a rest, and come down to visit me in the city.”
“Well, well, I do hope so, Miss Mercer! I ain’t been in the city since I don’t know when. Tom—myhusband—took me once, but that was years and years ago, and I expect there’s been a lot of changes since then.”
“I’m going to keep an eye on you, Mrs. Pratt. And I feel as if I were a sort of partner in this business, so if you don’t make as much money as I think you ought to, why, you’ll hear from me. I can promise you that! Girls, we’ll sleep in the lean-to to-night, and in the morning we’ll be off, bright and early.”
“Oh,” said Mrs. Pratt, “have you really got to go? And you’ll not sleep out to-night! You’ll take the house, and we’ll be the ones to sleep outside.”
“Nonsense, Mrs. Pratt! Who should be the ones to sleep in this fine new house the first night but you? We love to sleep in the open air, really we do! It’s no hardship, I can tell you.”
And, despite all of Mrs. Pratt’s protests, it was so arranged.
“I’ll hate to go away from here—really I will!” said Dolly, to Bessie. “It’s been perfectly fine,helping these people. And I feel as if we’d really done something.”
“Well, we certainly have, Dolly,” said Bessie.
“I do hope that butter and egg business will do well.”
“Iknowit’s going to do well,” said Eleanor, who had overheard. “And one reason is that you girls are going to help. Now we must all get to sleep, or we’ll never get started in the morning. I think we’ll have to ride part of the way to the seashore in the train, after all. We don’t want to be too late in getting there, you know.”
And in a few minutes silence reigned over the place. It was a picture of peace and content—a vast contrast to the scene of the previous night, when desolation and gloom seemed to dominate everything.
Parting in the morning brought tears alike to the eyes of those who stayed behind and those who were going on. The experience of the last two days had brought the Pratts and the girls of the Camp Fire very close together, and thePratt children—the younger ones at least—wept and refused to be comforted when they learned that their new friends were going away.
“Cheer up,” said Eleanor. “We’ll see you again, you know. Maybe we’ll all come up next summer. And we’ve had a good time, haven’t we?”
“We certainly have!” said Mrs. Pratt, and there was sincerity, as well as pleasure, in her tone. “I’ve often heard that good came out of evil, and joy out of sorrow, but I never had any such reason to believe it before this!”
Before the final parting, Eleanor had shown Mrs. Pratt exactly what she meant about the new way in which the butter was to be made.
“Of course, as your business grows, you will want to get better machinery,” she had said. “That will make the work much easier, and you will be able to do it more quickly too, and with less help than if you stuck to the old-fashioned way.”
“I’m going to take your advice in everything about running this farm, Miss Mercer,” Mrs.Pratt had replied. “You’ve certainly shown that you know what you’re talking about so far.”
“Take a trip down to my father’s farm some time, Mrs. Pratt, and they’ll be glad to show you everything they have there, I know. My father is very anxious for all the farmers in his neighborhood to profit by any help they can get. The only trouble is that a good many of them seem to feel that he is interfering with them.”
“Well, if they’re as stupid as that, it serves them right to keep on losing money, Miss Mercer.”
“But it’s natural, after all. You see they’ve run their farms their own way all their lives, and it’s the way they learned from their fathers. So it isn’t very strange that they’re apt to feel that they know more, from all that practice and experiment, than city people who are farming scientifically.”
“Does your father enjoy farming?”
“He says he does—and it’s a curious thing that he makes that farm pay its way, even allowingfor a whole lot of things he does that aren’t really necessary. That’s what proves, you see, that his theories are right—they pay.
“Of course, he could afford to lose money on it, and you can’t make a whole lot of those farmers in our neighborhood believe that he doesn’t. So now he is having the books of the farm fixed up so that any of the farmers around can see them, and find out for themselves how things are run.”
Tired as the girls of the Camp Fire had been the night before, they were wonderfully refreshed by their night’s sleep. The weather was much more pleasant than it had been, and a brisk wind had driven off much of the smoke that still remained when they reached the Pratt farm as a reminder of the scourge of fire. So the conditions for walking were good, and Eleanor Mercer set a round, swinging pace as they started off.
“I’ll really be glad to get out of this burned district. It’s awfully gloomy, isn’t it, Bessie?” said Dolly.
“Yes, especially when you realize what itmeans to the people who live in the path of the fire,” answered Bessie. “Seeing the Pratts as they were when we came up has given me an altogether new idea of these forest fires.”
“Yes. That’s what I mean. It’s bad enough to see the forest ruined, but when you think of the houses, and all the other things that are burned, too, why, it seems particularly dreadful.”
“Tom Pratt told me that a whole lot of animals were caught in the fire, too—chipmunks, and squirrels, and deer. That seems dreadful.”
“Oh, what a shame! I should think they could manage to get away, Bessie. Don’t you suppose they try?”
“Oh, yes, but you see they can’t reason the way human beings do, and a lot of these fires burn around in a circle, so that while they were running away from one part of the fire they might very easily be heading straight for another, and get caught right between two fires.”
Soon, however, they passed a section where theland had been cleared of trees for a space of nearly a mile, and, once they had travelled through it, they came to the deep green woods again, where no marring traces of the fire spoiled the beauty of their trip.
“Ah, don’t the woods smell good!” said Dolly. “So much nicer than that old smoky smell! I never smelt anything like that! It got so that everything I ate tasted of smoke. I’m certainly glad to get to where the fire didn’t come.”
Now the ground began to rise, and before long they found themselves in the beginning of Indian Gap. The ground rose gradually, and when they stopped for their midday meal, in a wild part of the gap, none of the girls were feeling more than normally and healthfully tired.
“Do many people come through here, Miss Eleanor?” asked Margery.
“At certain times, yes. But, you see, the forest fires have probably made a lot of people who intended to take this trip change their minds. In a way it’s a good thing, because we will be sureto find plenty of room at the Gap House. That’s where we are to spend the night. Sometimes when there’s a lot of travel, it’s very crowded there, and uncomfortable.”
“Is it a regular hotel?”
“No, it’s just a place for people to sleep. It’s where the trail starts up Mount Sherman, and it’s the station of the railroad that runs to the top of the mountain, too, for people who are too lazy to climb. There’s a gorgeous view there in the mornings, when the sun rises. You can see clear to the sea.”
“Oh, can’t we stop and see that?”
“We haven’t time to climb the mountain. If you want to go up on the incline railway, though, we can manage it. You get up at three o’clock in the morning, and get to the top while it’s still dark, so that you can see the very beginning of the sunrise.”
There was not a dissenting voice to the plan to make the trip, and it was decided to take the little extra time that would be required.
“After all,” said Eleanor, “we can get such an early start afterward that it won’t take very much time. And to-morrow we’ll finish our tramp through the gap, and stop at Windsor for the night. Then the next day we’ll take the train straight through to the seashore. I think really we’ll have more fun, and get more good out of it if we spend the time there than if we go through with our original plan of doing more walking before getting on the train.”
“Yes. We’ve lost quite a little time already, haven’t we?” said Margery.
“Two whole days at Lake Dean, and two days more staying with the Pratts,” said Eleanor. “That’s four days, and one can walk quite a long distance in four days if one sets one’s mind and one’s feet to it.”
“Well, we certainly couldn’t help the delay,” said Margery. “At Lake Dean the fire held us—and I wouldn’t think very much of any crowd that could see the trouble those poor people were in and not stay to help them.”
They slept well in the early part of that night in the rough quarters at the Gap House, and, while it was still dark, they were routed out to catch the funicular railway on its first trip of the day up Mount Sherman.
At first, when they were at the top of the mountain, there was nothing to be seen. But soon the sky in the east began to lighten and grow pink, then the fog that lay below them began to melt away, and, as the sun rose, they saw the full wonder of the spectacle.
“I never saw anything so beautiful in all my life!” exclaimed Bessie with a sigh of delight. “See how it seems to gild everything as the light rises, Dolly!”
“Yes, and you can see the sea, way off in the distance! How tiny all the towns and villages look from here! It’s just like looking at a map, isn’t it?”
“Well, it was certainly worth getting up in the middle of the night to see it, Bessie. And I do love to sleep, too!”
“I’d stay up all night to see this, any time. I never even dreamed of anything so lovely.”
“We were very fortunate,” said Eleanor, with a smile. “I’ve been up here when the fog was so thick that you couldn’t see a thing, and only knew the sun had risen because it got a little lighter. I’ve known it to be that way for a week at a time, and some people would stay, and come up here morning after morning, and be disappointed each time!”
“That’s awfully mean,” said Dolly. “I suppose, though, if they had never seen it, they wouldn’t mind so much, because they wouldn’t know what they were missing.”
“They never seemed very happy about it, though,” laughed Eleanor. “Well, it’s time to go down again, and be off for Windsor. And then to-morrow morning we’ll be off for the seashore. We’re to camp there, right on the beach, instead of living in a house. That will be much better, I think.”
CHAPTER IXA STARTLING DISCOVERY
“Bessie, why are you looking so glum?” asked Dolly, as they started on the last part of their walk, taking the Windsor road.
“Am I? I didn’t realize I was, Dolly. But—well, I suppose it’s because I’m rather sorry we’re leaving the mountains.”
“I think the seashore is every bit as nice as the mountains. There are ever so many things to do, and I know you’ll like Plum Beach, where we’re going. It’s the dandiest place—”
“It couldn’t be as nice as this, Dolly.”
“Oh, that seems funny to me, Bessie. I’ve always loved the seashore, ever since I can remember. And, of course, since I’ve learned to swim, I’ve enjoyed it even more than I used to.”
“You can’t swim much in the sea, can you? Isn’t the surf too heavy?”
“The surf’s good fun, even if you don’t do any swimming in it, Bessie. It picks you up and throws you around, and it’s splendid sport. But down at Plum Beach you can have either still water or surf. You see, there’s a beach and a big cove—and on that beach the water is perfectly calm, unless there’s a tremendous storm, and we’re not likely to run into one of those.”
“How is that, Dolly? I thought there was always surf at the seashore.”
“There’s a sand bar outside the cove, and it’s grown so that it really makes another beach, outside. And on that there is real surf. So we can have whichever sort of bathing we like best, or both kinds on the same day, if we want.”
“Maybe I’ll like it better when I see it, then. Because I do love to swim, and I don’t believe I’d enjoy just letting the surf bang me around.”
“Why, Bessie, you say you may like it better when you see it? Haven’t you ever been to the seashore?”
“I certainly never have, Dolly! You seem toforget that I’ve spent all the time I can remember in Hedgeville.”
“I do forget it, all the time. And do you know why? It’s because you seem to know such an awful lot about other places and things you never saw there. I suppose they made you read books.”
“Made me! That was one of the things Maw Hoover used to get mad at me for doing. Whenever she saw me reading a book it seemed to make her mad, and she’d say I was loafing, and find something for me to do, even if I’d hurried through all the chores I had so that I could get at the book sooner.”
“Then you used to like to read?”
“Oh, yes, I always did. The Sunday School had a sort of library, and I used to be able to get books from there. I love to read, and you would, too, Dolly, if you only knew how much fun you have out of books.”
Dolly made a face.
“Not the sort of books my Aunt Mabel wantsme to read,” she said decidedly. “Stupid old things they are! It’s just like going to school all over again. I get enough studying at school, thanks!”
“But you like to know about people and places you’ve never seen, don’t you!”
“Yes, but all the books I’ve ever seen that tell you about things like that are just like geographies. They give you a lot of things you have to remember, and there’s no fun to that.”
“You haven’t read the right sort of books, that’s all that’s the matter with you, Dolly. I tell you what—when we get back to the city, we’ll get hold of some good books, and take turns reading them aloud to one another. I think that would be good fun.”
“Well, maybe if they taught me as much as you seem to know about places you’ve never seen I wouldn’t mind reading them. Anyhow, books or no books, you’re going’ to love the seashore. Oh, it is such a delightful place—Plum Beach.”
“Tell me about it, Dolly.”
“Well, in the first place, it isn’t a regular seaside place at all. I mean there aren’t any hotels and boardwalks and things like that. It’s about ten miles from Bay City, and there they do have everything like that. But Plum Beach is just wild, the way it always has been. And I don’t see why, because it’s the best beach I ever saw—ever so much finer than at Bay City.”
“I’ll like the beach.”
“Yes, I know you will. And because it’s sort of wild and desolate, and off by itself that way, you can have the best time there you ever dreamed of. Last year we put on our bathing suits when we got up, and kept them on all day. You go in the water, you see, and then, if you lie down on the beach for half an hour, you’re dry. The sun shines right down on the sand, and it’s as warm as it can be.”
“I suppose that’s why you like it so much—because you don’t have the trouble of dressing and undressing.”
“It’s one reason,” said Dolly, who never pretendedabout anything, and was perfectly willing to admit that she was lazy. “But it’s nice to have the beach to yourselves, too, the way we do. You see, when we get there we’ll find tents all set up and ready for us.”
“Is there any fishing?”
Dolly smacked her lips.
“You bet there is!” she said. “Best sea bass you ever tasted, and about all you can catch, too! And it tastes delicious, because the fish down there get cooked almost as soon as they’re caught. And there are lobsters and crabs—and it’s good fun to go crabbing. Then at low tide we dig for clams, and they’re good, too—I’ll bet you never dreamed how good a clam could be!”
“How about the other things—milk, and eggs, and all those!”
“Oh, that’s easy! There are a lot of farms a little way inland, and we get all sorts of fine things from them.”
“I wonder if Mr. Holmes will try to play any tricks on us down there, Dolly. He has abouteverywhere we’ve been since Zara and I joined the Camp Fire Girls, you know.”
“I’m hoping he won’t find out, Bessie. That would be fine. I certainly would like to know why he is so anxious to get hold of you and Zara. I bet it’s money, and that there’s some secret about you.”
“Money? Why, he’s got more than he can spend now! Even if there is a secret, I don’t see how money can have anything to do with it.”
“Well, you remember this, Bessie: the more money people have, the more they seem to want. They’re never content. It’s the people who only have a little who seem to be happy, and willing to get along with what they have. How about your old Farmer Weeks?”
“That’s so, Dolly. He certainly was that way. He had more money than anyone in Hedgeville or anywhere near it, and yet he was the stingiest, closest fisted old man in town.”
“There you are!”
“Still I think Mr. Holmes must be a whole lotricher than Farmer Weeks, or than all the other people in Hedgeville put together. And it doesn’t seem as if there was any money he could make out of Zara or me that would tempt him to do what he’s done.”
“Do you know what I’ve noticed most, Bessie, about the way he’s gone to work?”
“No. What?”
“The way he has spent money. He’s acted as if he didn’t care a bit how much it cost him, if only he got what he wanted. And people in the city never spend money unless they expect to get it back.”
“Who’s the detective now! You called me one a little while ago, but it seems to me that you’re doing pretty well in that line yourself.”
“Oh, it’s all right to laugh, but, just the same, I’ll bet that when we get at the bottom of all this mystery, we’ll find that the chief reason Mr. Holmes was in it was that he wanted to get hold of some information that would make it easy for him to get a whole lot more than it cost him.”
“Well, maybe you’re right, Dolly. But I’d certainly like to know just what he has got up his sleeve.”
“I think he’ll be careful for a little while now, Bessie. He never knew that Miss Eleanor had that letter he’d written to the gypsy. And it must have damaged him a lot to have as much come out about that as did.”
“I expect a lot of people who heard it didn’t believe it.”
“Even if that’s so, I guess there were plenty who did believe it, and who think now that Mr. Holmes is a pretty good man to leave alone. You see, that proved absolutely that he had really hired that gypsy to carry you off, and that is a pretty mean thing to do. And people must know by this time that if there was any legal way of getting you and Zara away from the Camp Fire and Miss Mercer, he would do it.”
“But he didn’t get into any trouble for doing it, Dolly.”
“He’s got so much money that he could hirelawyers to get him out of almost any scrape he got in, Bessie. That’s the trouble. Those people at Hamilton were afraid of him. They know how rich he is, and they didn’t want to take any chance of making him angry at them.”
“Yes, that’s just it. And I’m afraid he’s got so much money that a whole lot of people who would say what they really thought if they weren’t afraid of him, are on his side. You see, he says that I’m a runaway, just because I didn’t stay any longer with the Hoovers. And probably he can make a whole lot of people think that I was very ungrateful, and that he is quite right in trying to get me back into the same state as Hedgeville.”
“They’d better talk to Miss Eleanor, if he makes them think that. They’ll soon find out which is right and which is wrong in that business. And if she doesn’t tell them, I guess Mr. Jamieson will—and he’d be glad of the chance, too!”
“Let’s not worry about him, anyhow. I hopehe won’t find out where we are, too. We haven’t seen or heard anything of him since we went back to Long Lake from Hamilton, so I don’t see why there isn’t a good chance of his letting us alone for a while now.”
They reached Windsor, the little town at the other end of Indian Gap, late in the afternoon, having cooked their midday meal in the gap.
“I know the people in a big boarding-house here,” said Eleanor, “and we’ll be very comfortable. In the morning we’ll take an early train, so that we can get to Plum Beach before it’s too late to get comfortably settled. I’ve sent word on ahead to have the tents ready for us, but, even so, there will be a good many things to do.”
“There always are,” sighed Dolly. “That’s the one thing I don’t like about camping out.”
“I expect really, if you only knew the truth, Dolly, it’s the one thing you like best of all,” smiled Eleanor. “That’s one of the great differences between being at home, where everythingis done for you, and camping out, where you have to look after yourself.”
“Well, I don’t like work, anyhow, and I don’t believe I ever shall, Miss Eleanor, no matter what it’s called. Some of it isn’t as bad as some other kinds, that’s all.”
Eleanor laughed to herself, because she knew Dolly well enough not to take such declarations too seriously.
“I’ve got some work for you to-night,” she said. “I want you and Bessie to go to a meeting of the girls that belong to one of the churches here, and tell them about the Camp Fire. They found out we were coming, and they would like to know if they can’t start a Camp Fire of their own.
“And I think they’ll get a better idea of things, and be less timid and shy about asking questions if two of you girls go than if I try to explain. I will come in later, after they’ve had a chance to talk to you two, but by that time they ought to have a pretty clear idea.”
“That’s not work, that’s fun,” declared Dolly.
“I’m glad you think so, because you will be more likely to be successful.”
And so after supper Bessie and Dolly went, with two girls who called for them, to the Sunday School room of one of the Windsor churches, ready to do all they could to induce the local girls to form a Camp Fire of their own. And, being thoroughly enthusiastic, they soon fired the desire of the Windsor girls.
“They won’t have just one Camp Fire; they’ll have two or three,” predicted Dolly, when she and Bessie were walking back to the boarding-house later with Eleanor Mercer. “They asked plenty of questions, all right. Nothing shy about them, was there, Bessie?”
Bessie laughed.
“Not if asking questions proves people aren’t shy,” she admitted. “I thought they’d never stop thinking of things to ask.”
“That’s splendid,” said Eleanor. “The CampFire is the best thing these girls could have. It will do them a great deal of good, and I was sure that the way to make them see how much they would enjoy it was to let them understand how enthusiastic you two were. That meant more to them than anything I could have said, I’m sure.”
“I don’t see why,” said Dolly.
“Because they’re girls like you, Dolly, and it’s what you like, and show you like, that would appeal to them. I’m older, you see, and they might think that things that I would expect them to like wouldn’t really please them at all.”
“What’s the matter with you, Bessie?” asked Dolly suddenly, as they reached the house. She was plainly concerned and surprised, and Eleanor, rather startled, since she had seen nothing in Bessie to provoke such a question, looked at her keenly.
“Nothing, except that I’m a little tired, I think.”
But Dolly wasn’t satisfied. She knew her chum too well.
“You’ve got something on your mind, but you don’t want to worry us,” she said. “Better own up, Bessie!”
Bessie, however, would not answer. And in the morning she seemed to be her old self. Just as they were starting for the train, though, Bessie suddenly hung back at the door of the boarding-house.
“Wait for me a minute, Dolly,” she said. “I left a handkerchief in our room. I’ll be right down. Go on, the rest of you; we’ll soon catch up.”
She ran upstairs for the handkerchief.
“I left it behind on purpose, Dolly,” she explained, when she came down. “I wanted them to go ahead. Ah, look!”
As they went along, with most of the girls fully a hundred yards ahead of them, a lurking figure was plainly to be seen following the girls.
“It’s Jake Hoover!” said Dolly excitedly.
“I thought I saw him last night. That was why you thought something was wrong, Dolly,” said Bessie. “But I wanted to make sure before I said anything.”
“That means trouble,” said Dolly.