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

“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.

CHAPTER IV

“LONESOME LIZ”

“Oh, galloping grasshoppers!” gasped Bobby Hargrew, clinging tight to Laura and Nellie Agnew in the dressing-room. “Do you hear what she says?”

“What language, Bob!” said Nellie, in horror. “How can you?”

“Of whom are you speaking?” asked Laura, with an admonishing look.

“That Lil Pendleton. The gall of her!”

“Stop, Bob!” commanded Laura. “You talk like a street urchin.”

“I don’t care if I talk like a sea urchin,” complained the smaller girl. “She says she’s going with us.”

“Where?” asked Nell.

“Camping.”

“Who?” exclaimed Laura, promptly.

“That Pendleton girl. Says her mother just told her. Your mother said so, Laura Belding. So there!”

“Why – why–”

“I don’t want to complain of your mother, Laura,” said the grocer’s daughter, “but it seems too bad we can’t pick and choose whom we’ll have go camping in our crowd.”

“Mother doesn’t understand! I am sure she never meant to make us take Lil if we didn’t want her.”

“And surely we don’t,” declared the doctor’s daughter, with more emphasis than she usually used in commenting upon any subject.

“Let’s put the rollers under her and let her zip,” exclaimed the slangy Bobby.

“If Gee Gee should hear you,” laughed Laura, referring to one of the very strict lady teachers of Central High, Miss Grace Gee Carrington.

“She’s too busy with Margit Salgo – Beg pardon!” exclaimed Bobby. “Margaret Carrington, as she will in future be known. Gee Gee has scarcely called me down this week.”

“Now, if it was Margit who wanted to go,” sighed Nell Agnew, speaking of the half-Gypsy girl who had just come under the care of Miss Carrington.

“Or Eve Sitz,” added Bobby. “But Eve says she gets out-of-door work enough on the farm in the summer. Camping out is no fun for her.”

“I don’t know what to say about Lily,” began Laura. “I cannot understand mother promising such a thing. If anybody should decide, it should be Jess’ mother. She is going with us.”

“Oh! there’s another thing,” interrupted the fly-away Bobby. “If Lil goes, she’s going to take along a lady’s maid.”

“What?” gasped the other girls.

“Mrs. Pendleton is going to pay the wages of a girl to go with us and do the camp work,” announced Bobby, and now she spoke with some enthusiasm.

“Goodness!” exclaimed Laura.

“Not so bad,” sighed Nellie, who really did not like hard work and had dreaded that division of labor which she knew must fall to her if they went camping without “help.”

“Having a girl along to cook and do up the beds and wash dishes and the like wouldn’t be so bad,” announced Bobby, growing braver as Nell seemed to encourage the idea.

“Well! Miss Hargrew!” accused Laura. “I believe you have gone over to the enemy. You really want Lil to go with us to Acorn Island.”

“No. But I’d be glad to have her mother pay the wages of somebody to do most of the hard work,” grinned Bobby.

There was a regular “buzz society,” as Bobby called it, after the girls were dressed. The original six who had planned to go camping on Acorn Island did hum like a colony of bees when they all learned that Lily Pendleton was likely to be foisted upon them.

“It’s a shame!” exclaimed Jess, angrily. “She knows well enough we don’t want her.”

“Well,” murmured one of the Lockwood twins. “She asked us and we said the invitation would have to come through Laura.”

“Cowards!” exclaimed Mother Wit, dramatically. “That’s why she got her mother to go to mine. And I am real angry with mother–”

“Oh, Laura! we wouldn’t offend your mother for anything,” said Nell, hastily.

“Or put her in an uncomfortable position,” Bobby added. “She’s been too nice to us all.”

“And, of course, we have to stand Lil in the school and gymnasium. She won’t kill us; she’s only silly,” went on Nell.

“I believe you’re all more or less willing to have Lil go,” declared Laura, in wonder.