The Outdoor Girls Around the Campfire by Laura Lee Hope (free novel 24 txt) 📖

the latter, looking up demurely. The furious color had subsided and she was just flushed enough to look unusually pretty. As for what Allen thought—

“Look here,” he said, abruptly, his handsome young face very serious as he searched Betty’s expression, “did Babcock tell me the truth when he said the General Pershing almost ran you down?”

On Betty’s face was a look of bewilderment.

“How did you know?” she questioned. “It only just happened?”

“Who’s Babcock?” asked Grace, with interest.

“A lawyer I’ve met once or twice,” returned Allen, still with his worried eyes fixed on Betty. “We ran into each other a few minutes ago. Seems he just landed from the General Pershing and he was full of this incident. Said it was a miracle the boat wasn’t wrecked. The description he gave me of it sounded very much like the Gem.”

“It was the Gem,” said Mollie.

“But he was wrong about a miracle saving us,” put in Amy, throwing an arm about the Little Captain. “It was Betty.”

Allen was on the verge of saying that Betty was a miracle, anyhow, but, considering that there were a good many people about, thought better of it. However, his eyes spoke for him.

“You must be more careful, Betty,” he said, taking the rope from her with which she was making the Gem fast to the dock. “You mustn’t take such chances when I’m not around.”

He was close to her and speaking in a low tone. Amy and Mollie and Grace had considerately turned away and were walking slowly in the direction of Betty’s house. Having fastened the little boat securely, Betty and Allen turned to follow them.

“Please promise you’ll be more careful when I’m not with you,” Allen persisted, and Betty glanced up at him with a hint of laughter in her eyes. But the laughter hid a little hurt, for Betty was feeling a bit neglected. Mollie was right when she said they had not seen nor heard from Allen for several days. Of course he had been busy—he always was—but just the same—

So said Betty:

“If I took chances only when you were around, I wouldn’t take very many, would I?”

She tried to speak lightly but she did not quite succeed, not as far as Allen was concerned. Looking down at her suddenly serious little face he wished that they might be alone for just five minutes so that he might explain. And he was in such a rush!

“That isn’t fair,” he said, gravely. “You know I wouldn’t have stayed away if I hadn’t had to. Look here, Betty—dear,” they had come to a corner and he had stopped, facing her. He had an appointment at three-thirty and here it was three-twenty-five this minute. “I can’t stay now, I’ve got to rush. Can I see you to-night?”

What perverse imp in Betty made her answer lightly:

“I have an engagement to-night, Allen.”

All at once the young lawyer looked savage. Confound that engagement!

“Betty,” he said, desperately, “I’m coming to-night anyway, and if you won’t see me I’ll camp on your doorstep till you do.”

With this threat he turned and hurried down the street, his back as stiff as a ramrod, the heavy frown still on his brow. Why, he thought, gloomily, did Betty always have to look most adorable just when she was going to be most aggravating? How was he going to keep his mind on business, anyway, when all he could think of was Betty’s face?

Meanwhile, Betty had looked musingly after his retreating figure and then, at the thought of the savage look on his face, chuckled unfeelingly. Just the same, her eyes were a little wistful as she hurried to catch up with the girls. She did wish his old business wouldn’t take up so much of his time! Maybe if he had taken up medicine, now, instead of the law—but no, that would have been worse yet. Doctors never had any time at all to themselves. She was still wondering whether she ought to see Allen that night—knowing all the time that she would not miss seeing him for the world—when the girls turned and spied her.

“Well, did we walk slowly enough?” asked Mollie, teasingly, as together they turned the corner into the street where Betty lived.

“Is he coming to-night?” added Grace, with a chuckle.

“Since I can’t answer both of you at once,” Betty retorted, “I sha’n’t answer you at all. There’s mother on the porch,” she added, to change the subject.

“And now,” sighed Grace, happily, as they turned in at the walk of Betty’s house, “just lead us to that apple pie.”

While they ate pie and drank gratefully of the ice-cold ginger ale, Betty told her mother of Henry Blackford’s cabin in the woods and explained to her the use they wished to make of it.

“It looks just providential to us,” she finished, eagerly. “Mother, if you were so cruel as to say I couldn’t go, I believe I’d take a running jump and land right in the middle of the lake.”

Mrs. Nelson’s eyes twinkled.

“Far be it from me to drive you to that, dear,” she said. “I think the idea is a splendid one and you all ought to be very grateful to Mr. Blackford for suggesting it.”

Whereupon Mrs. Nelson found herself promptly kissed by not only Betty, but the other girls as well. So sudden was the onslaught that she waved them away laughing and declaring it would take her a week at least to get back all the breath she had lost.

A few minutes later, having finished all the apple pie and ginger ale in sight, the girls started en masse for Mollie’s house, to gain a like consent from Mollie’s mother, the sprightly little French widow.

“And maybe,” said Grace hopefully, as they neared the Billette home, “your mother has something in the refrigerator for us too, Mollie dear.”

“Your appetite does you credit, Grace,” said Mollie sarcastically. “But in the language of our day I must beg you not to kid yourself. If there ever was anything in the ice box, that dainty has been done away with by Dodo and Paul long ere this. So if you feel you need any further refreshment you’d better stop at the pastry shop and fortify yourself.”

As they were at that moment passing the shop in question Grace gazed longingly into the pastry-filled windows, then as the girls watched her laughing, regretfully shook her head.

“Can’t be done,” she murmured sorrowfully. “Used up half my allowance already and only three days of the week gone.”

“It surely gets me, Grace Ford,” said Mollie, a trifle resentfully—for Mollie was gaining flesh a little too rapidly to suit her—“how you manage to eat sweets all day and still keep your sylph-like form.”

“It’s a gift,” remarked Grace, with the sweet, superior smile that always made Mollie boil. “I sha’n’t tell you the secret, Mollie darling, even if you did gain five pounds in two weeks.”

“Didn’t,” retorted Mollie, with a frown. “It was only four and a half. I don’t see why you always have to exaggerate everything.”

“What’s half a pound between friends?” returned Grace, airily.

Luckily they reached Mollie’s home at this minute, which fact probably averted an exchange of blows, so Betty laughingly declared.

Mrs. Billette was at home and she listened rather absently to the girls’ recital of what they hoped to do during the summer. Since at times they all talked at once it was small wonder that a rather bewildered expression grew in her eyes.

“You want to go camping in this cabin in the woods, which belong to Mr. Blackford, is that so?” she said at last, in her pretty accent. “Why, yes, I think it will be all right. You have learn’ pretty well to take care of yourselves,” she added, with an indulgent smile that for a moment chased the worried frown from her forehead. However, a sudden sharp sound, like the falling of a heavy body from above stairs, brought back the harassed expression to her face.

“Those children, Dodo and Paul!” she said, wearily. “To-day they have nearly drive me wild. I wish you would take them with you into the woods, Mollie. It would be all right for them to run wild there. They could break nothing but their own heads.”

“Which they would certainly do,” said Mollie, with a wry little face. The idea of having her fun hampered by the mischievous antics of the twins was not a pleasant one.

At that moment there came a terrific bumping and thumping down the stairs and with one accord Mrs. Billette and the four girls rushed to the door.

“It is done at last!” wailed Mrs. Billette. “This time they have kill themselves!”