Part 18 (1/2)

That first day in camp the girls had no visitors. Through their binoculars and opera gla.s.ses, they could see the boys very active about their camp across the lake. It was plain they were too busy to visit Acorn Island.

The girls of Central High, however, had plenty of fun without the boys. Only Bobby declared that Lil princ.i.p.ally spent the time staring through her opera gla.s.ses across the lake, wis.h.i.+ng Purt would come over in the _d.u.c.h.ess;_ but Lil angrily denied _that._

”And you stop trying to stir up a rumpus, Miss,” commanded Laura, to the cut-up. ”Let us live, if we can, like a Happy Family.”

”My!” drawled Jess, ”Mother Wit is nothing if not optimistic.”

”Ha! what is your idea of an optimist?” demanded Nellie Agnew.

”Why,” Jess said, smiling quietly, ”I read of a real optimist once. He was strolling along a country road and an automobile came along and hit him in the back. It knocked him twenty feet.

”'Oh, well!' said he, as he got up, 'I was going in this direction, anyway.'”

”Aw, say!” put in Bobby, ”that's all right for a _story;_ but _my_ idea of a real optimist is a man who's dead broke, going into a restaurant and ordering oysters on the half sh.e.l.l with the hope that he can pay for the dinner by finding a pearl in one of the bivalves.”

They all laughed at that, and then Laura said:

”To get back to our original conversation, let us see if we can't get on in _this_ camp without friction. And that means that _you_, Bobby, must set a watch on your tongue.”

”What do you suppose my tongue is--a timekeeper?” cried the irreverent Bobby.

Laura herself helped get dinner, the main dish of which was fried fish. And how good they tasted, fresh out of the lake!

Mrs. Morse had kept her typewriter tapping at a swift pace in the cabin, and she could scarcely be coaxed to leave her story long enough to eat dinner.

”This quietude is an incentive to good work,” she said, reflectively, at table. ”I shall be sorry to go back to town.”

But it was very early in their experience to say _that._ Lizzie Bean was not yet an enthusiast for the simple life, that was sure. She and Mother Wit had gotten better acquainted during the preparations for the noonday meal.

”I ain't never been crazy about the country myself,” admitted Liz.

”Cows, and bugs, and muskeeters, and frogs, don't seem so int'restin'

to me as steam cars, and pitcher shows, and sody-water fountains, and street pianners.

”I like the crowds, I do. A place where all ye hear all day is a mowin' merchine clackin', or see a hoss switchin' his tail to keep off the bluebottles, didn't never coax me, _much._”

”The bucolic life does not tempt you, then?” said Laura, her eyes twinkling.

”Never heard it called that afore. Colic's it serious thing--'specially with babies. But the city suits me, I can tell ye,” said Liz.

”I never seen no-one that liked the woods like you gals seem to before, 'ceptin' a feller that lived in the boardin' house I worked at in Albany. He was a bug on campin' and fis.h.i.+n' and gunnin', and all that.”

”Did you work in Albany?” queried Laura, surprised.

”Yep. Last year. I had a right good place, too. Plenty of work. I got up at four o'clock in the mornin' and I never _did_ get through at night!”

”Oh, my!”

”Yep. I love work. It keeps yer mind off yer troubles, if you have enough and plenty to do. But if yer have too much of it, yer get fed up, as ye might say. I didn't get time to sleep.”

Laura had to laugh at that.