The Outdoor Girls Around the Campfire by Laura Lee Hope (free novel 24 txt) đź“–
- Author: Laura Lee Hope
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“Just the same,” said Grace as, a few hours later, the girls started for home and dinner, “I’d just as soon leave the twins behind when we go on our vacation.”
“Poor kiddies,” said Betty, with a twinkle in her eye. “Just think how they would enjoy themselves!”
“Yes,” retorted Grace, unmoved. “But just think how we would enjoy ourselves.”
“Speaking of our vacation,” said Mollie, who had agreed to walk as far as Betty’s house with her. “It seems as though things were just about settled for one grand and glorious time.”
“How about you, Grace?” asked Amy, as they paused at the corner before separating for their respective domiciles. “Do you suppose your folks will give you the O.K.?”
“Amy, what slang!” chuckled Betty. “If we don’t look out, you’ll be giving us points.”
“Impossible,” retorted Amy, at which Betty grinned still more.
“Why, yes, I guess,” said Grace, in reply to Amy’s question. “The folks will let me go anywhere as long as Will comes along.”
“Good gracious, are we going to let the boys in on this?” asked Mollie, wide-eyed.
“Did you ever know of a time we were able to keep the boys out—altogether?” retorted Grace, favoring Mollie with a pitying glance. “We’ve tried it, haven’t we?” she added, as Mollie still stared at her.
“We-ell, not very hard,” said Betty, impishly, and, looking at her, the girls had to laugh.
“You’re enough to demoralize anybody, Betty Nelson,” said Mollie, giving her a hug. “You won’t even let us pretend we don’t want the boys.”
“I don’t see why we should pretend,” said Amy, boldly, flushing as the girls turned their laughing eyes upon her. “We always have a lot better time with them,” she persisted, and the Little Captain hugged her impulsively.
“Of course we do. Don’t let ’em tell you different,” she said gayly, then turned decidedly on her heel. “I don’t know about the rest of you,” she flung back at them over her shoulder, “but I do know I’ve got to be getting home. Mother will think I’m lost. Coming, Mollie?”
And so they parted, promising to get together on the morrow for a grand “pow-wow” and to make definite plans for their outing.
“Is Allen coming to-night, Betty?” asked Mollie of the Little Captain, as they stopped before Betty’s door.
“He said he was,” said Betty, lightly, adding ruefully: “And he left before I had a chance to contradict him.”
“Which of course you wanted to do,” teased Mollie, adding, soberly: “Have you noticed anything unusual about Allen, Betty?”
Betty looked startled, but her answer sounded indifferent enough.
“I haven’t had much of a chance to notice anything about him lately,” she said, but sharp little Mollie was not one whit deceived.
“He’s got something on his mind,” she said, thoughtfully. “Once or twice I’ve met him on the street and he was in such a hurry going somewhere that he didn’t even notice me. The last time I called after him and he stopped and apologized for not seeing me, just like a gentleman. But for all that, he was in a dreadfully big hurry to get away.”
“Just busy, I guess,” said Betty, adding, as she answered her mother’s call from within the house: “He’s getting to be terribly popular, you know.”
Although Betty had denied that she had noticed any change in Allen, in her own heart she knew that she had, and wondered what could be the matter. She ate her dinner absently and hurried through her dessert—it was a good one, too, plum cake with hard sauce—so that she might “pretty” herself before Allen arrived.
As she brushed her dark curls into some semblance of order and regarded her flushed face in the mirror over her pretty dressing table, Betty reflected whimsically.
“And I was wondering,” she said, a little quirk at the corners of her mouth, “whether I should see him or not. It would really be better if I didn’t. It might teach him that he can’t stay away for a whole week without even ’phoning—” She paused and regarded her image thoughtfully.
Then, with a smile, she patted the last unruly lock of hair into place and went over to her closet to select the prettiest gown she had.
“And all the time,” she mused, “I knew I’d see him. I had to when he spoke in that tone. And he knew it too. Well,” with a sigh, “there isn’t any use worrying over it, I suppose.”
The dress she took from the hook was a fluffy organdie of that popular and becoming color known as “American beauty.” And when Betty slipped it over her dark head and stood once more before the mirror, the color of it miraculously matched the color in her cheeks. Betty—and the Little Captain was not at all conceited—was well satisfied with the effect.
Before she had quite finished putting the last touches to her pretty toilet she heard Allen talking and laughing with her father on the porch.
“It’s a wonder,” she thought, resentfully, “that he can spare any time at all from that old business of his. I wonder,” she added, inconsistently, “if he will like my dress.”
As a matter of fact, it is doubtful if Allen really saw the dress at all. For he was staring straight at Betty and no dress, however lovely, could compete with Betty’s face when she looked as she looked to-night.
Mr. Nelson, enjoying an after-dinner cigar, noted the direction of the young lawyer’s glance and chuckled to himself. He liked Allen Washburn very much, and, strange as it may seem, he liked his pretty daughter even better. So it is very easy to see that everybody was happy.
After a while, like a very thoughtful and obliging parent, he went inside, ostensibly to play the phonograph, but really to ask proudly of his wife if Betty wasn’t the prettiest thing she ever saw.
To which Mrs. Nelson replied, that, though she hadn’t seen Betty yet to-night, she would agree, just on general principles, that she was.
“And the best of it is,” added the woman, softly, “Betty doesn’t know how lovely she is. She is just as sweet and unspoiled as she was at ten.”
“Let’s hope that she will always be so,” replied Betty’s father, gravely.
Meanwhile, out on the porch the last warm rays of the sun had given place to the soft summer twilight and Allen brought his chair closer to Betty’s so that he might watch the expression on her face. She was smiling a little, as though enjoying some joke that he could not share and he wondered if she were going to let him be serious. It was very seldom that she did.
“Are you laughing at me?” he asked, suddenly.
Betty’s face became, on the instant, demurely grave.
“How could you think it?” she murmured, looking up at him innocently. “What is there funny about you, Allen?”
“A good many things, I’ve come to believe,” answered Allen, ruefully. “At least, every time I see you, you seem amused.”
“I haven’t been amused very much lately then, have I?” she murmured, and once more Allen began to look savage.
“Stop it!” he said, and Betty looked at him, wide-eyed. Her mirth nearly bubbled over.
“Were you speaking to me?” she asked, and then at the look on his face she began to laugh and the more savage he looked the more she laughed.
Allen got up and walked to the other end of the porch. A moment later Betty’s voice, still choked with laughter, reached him.
“Allen, don’t be a goose,” she said. “Come here and talk to me. I won’t laugh. Truly I won’t.”
Allen came, still forbidding, and sat down beside her. He was quiet so long that she finally reopened the conversation.
“What’s the matter, Allen?” she asked, gently. “Are you worried about anything?”
At her changed tone he turned to her eagerly.
“Will you listen to me without laughing?”
There was a sparkle in Betty’s eyes but her lips were grave.
“Yes, anything you say,” she said, meekly.
Allen looked suspicious, but he went on, just the same.
“There is something on my mind,” he said, so gravely that immediately Betty became grave too. “I’d like to tell you, little Betty, and then maybe you will realize why I haven’t been able to come around lately.”
“Tell me,” said Betty, softly.
THE MATTER OF A WILL
Allen paused a moment, his hands clasped on his knees, his eyes thoughtfully upon them.
“I have a client,” he said at last. “He’s an old, old man. Though he retained me a week ago, it was only to-day that I was able to persuade him to put his last will and testament into writing. Poor fellow, he seems to have had a horror all his life of making a will. Thought that the moment he did, it would be the signing of his death warrant.”
In spite of the warm evening breeze Betty shuddered.
“I don’t wonder,” she said. “A will has always seemed a horrid thing to me.”
“But a very necessary one,” Allen reminded her. “The old fellow has considerable of this world’s goods and since he can’t hope to take them with him where he’s going, it’s only sensible to dispose of them justly before he goes.”
“Oh,” said Betty, pityingly. “Is he dying, Allen?”
The young lawyer nodded soberly.
“And his dying isn’t the most pitiful thing about it,” he said. “Everybody has to make up his mind to die sometime and he has lived longer than most. But what worries me,” he paused and the frown deepened, “is that he has something on his mind that, it seems, he can’t bring himself to confide to anybody. Even the will that he drew up to-day isn’t final—or at least, I judged that it wasn’t by the fact that he told me to come back to-morrow.”
“You think he wants to change his will?” asked Betty, puzzled. “I wonder why.”
“If I knew that,” said Allen, with a sudden smile, “I’d know everything, most likely. The other day when he was out of his head—but there,” he checked himself, drawing himself up short as though he were about to say too much, “I can’t betray the confidence of a client. Not that he’s given me his confidence to any marked extent,” he finished with a rueful smile.
Betty was quiet for a moment, thinking over what he had said. She knew Allen well enough to be sure that he had not told her everything he knew. That, as he said, would be to betray the confidence of a client.
There was something very pathetic in the thought of the aged man dying with something on his conscience, a misdeed possibly, perhaps an injustice to some innocent person, and unable even in his extremity, poor stubborn old fellow, to confess.
“Suppose, Allen—” she said suddenly. “Suppose he dies without making a confession?”
Allen shrugged his shoulders.
“That’s probably what he will do,” he answered. “And in that case the mystery—if there is one—will die with him.”
“It’s a pity,” said the Little Captain thoughtfully. “I wish we could do something to help him.”
“Well,” said Allen, turning to her with a queer little smile on his lips, “it’s just like you to wish that. But if I were you I wouldn’t pity the old codger too much. I reckon he’s been a pretty hard man in his day.”
Allen’s lips tightened, and again Betty thought that there was something more behind his words than he was free to tell her. She saw also that the matter of this queer old man and his will had taken a great hold upon him. There surely must be some mystery.
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