"Do you know, Mr. Tucker, I have half a mind to give up the trip to White Sulphur.--It is so pleasant here and so delightful to be with my children again; and if your daughters and that sweet little friend of theirs care to remain with us, I shall be more than pleased to chaperone them." "Oh, you are kind!" exclaimed the wily Zebedee. "I cannot thank you enough. If you choose to make it so, Camp Carter will vie with White Sulphur as a resort. I shall certainly bring Parker up next week." Mr. Tucker grasped the first opportunity to inform the anxious Nan of his successfully performed mission. "Oh, how did you do it?" "By just a little twist of the wrist. You shall have to put up with my girls though for another week or so. Your mother has promised to chaperone them until I fetch them away." "Splendid! Do they want to stay?" "They are dying to. I only hope they won't tear things wide open at camp. They are terribly hoydenish at times." "Mr. Tucker, tell me: did you really get mother to give up White Sulphur just to chaperone the twins and Page?" "You ask her! I think she thinks she did." "I believe I'll call you Mr. Machiavelli Tucker." "Don't flatter me so yet. Wait until I accomplish the seemingly impossible of making your mother decide of her own accord that your sister had better not come out yet." "Can you do that, too?" "I don't want to sound conceited but I believe I can. This is our secret, so don't tell a soul that we have any hand in this matter. Just let Douglas think it is fortune smiling on her." "All right, but nothing can ever make me forget your kindness!" and Nan held his hand with both of hers with no more trace of shyness than Hiram G. Parker might have shown in dancing a german. "What on earth have you done to make Nan so eternally grateful?" demanded Dum Tucker, coming suddenly around a spur of rock on the mountain path where her father had accosted Nan. "I am going to leave you girls up here for some days longer. Isn't that enough for her to be grateful over?" "We--ll, I don't know--that sounds rather fishy." "And besides, I am going to send her up a ouija board to pass the hours away until I return. How about that?" "Oh, now you are talking! That is something to be grateful about. We are all of us dying to try it," but Dum could not see why Nan was blushing so furiously and evidently trying to hold in the giggles, and she plainly caught a wink passing between her dignified parent and the demure Nan. "He's up to something, but it wouldn't be very gentlemanly of me to try to find out if he doesn't want me to know," she said to herself. The Tucker Twins had been motherless since they were tiny babies and their ridiculously young father had had the rearing of them alone and unaided. Many stepmothers had been picked out for these irrepressible girls by well meaning friends and relatives, but Jeffry Tucker had remained unmarried, much to the satisfaction of the said twins.