The Camp Fire Girls; Or, The Secret of an Old Mill — John Stuart Mill — John Shaqi
The Camp Fire Girls; Or, The Secret of an Old Mill
John Stuart Mill · en
“There doesn’t seem to be,” went on the Guardian, whose rather short
breath bore to her the unwelcome intelligence that she was getting
stout. “I really must exercise more,” she told herself. “I am positively
getting indolent, and in camp—of all things!”
“Everything seems to be as we left it,” declared Natalie after a hurried
glance around, while Mrs. Bonnell sat down on a board nailed between two
trees making a rustic seat.
“They could easily have opened our tent, gone in and tied the flaps back
again,” suggested Alice. “Do hurry and look in, Nat!” for
breath-of-the-pine-tree was fumbling with the knots of the cords.
“We must learn to tie some of the queer knots the boy scouts have in
their manual book,” suggested Mabel.
By this time Natalie had succeeded in loosening the tent-flaps. With the
boys gathered in a circle back of them the girls peered into their
sleeping and living quarters.
“Everything seems all right,” murmured Natalie.
“Unlock the trunks and make sure,” suggested Alice. “If they have taken
my best dress I——”
“You won’t go over to the dance at the Point to-morrow night; will you?”
asked Jack.
“Indeed, I’ll not. But don’t suggest such a thing!”
The girls crowded into the tent, and a hurried search disclosed that, so
far as they could tell, nothing was missing.
“Though they may have taken all our things to eat,” said Marie. “If they
have, we’ll have to depend on you boys.”
“Huh! We’re cleaned out,” exclaimed Phil. “We came to get enough of your
stuff for supper.”
“You poor boys!” murmured Mabel.
“This is the first they’ve thought of us,” declared Blake. “They’re so
anxious about their own stuff that they didn’t care what had happened to
ours.”
“Oh, we did so!” declared Alice. “Only you frightened us, meeting us the
way you did.”
“Tell us all about it,” urged Natalie.
“There isn’t anything to tell,” replied Jack. “We had been off fishing,
and when we came back we found our pantry pretty well cleaned out. Lucky
we didn’t have an awful lot. We had to stock up again to-morrow,
anyhow.”
“Let’s go over and take a look, girls,” proposed Marie. “We won’t need
to get much for supper. There are some cold beans and——”
“What about us?” came from Jack. “Don’t you s’pose we want to eat?”
“Well, you can come to supper with us,” suggested Mrs. Bonnell. “After
that we’ll all go over to the Point in the motor-boat—that is if it
runs—and we’ll stock up.”
“Good!” cried Blake. “And we’ll have a dance after it.”
“Then come on!” proposed Alice. “We’ll look for clues, and decide who it
is took their things.”
“Ha! Ha! That’s a good one!” jeered Jack. “Look for clues! Why you
couldn’t even find your way home from Bear Pond!”
“But we did to-day,” said his sister quietly.
“You did? Were you over there again?”
“We were,” replied Marie.
“You must be fond of the place,” suggested Jack. “What did you find this
time—a snake?”
“We located the Gypsy Camp,” said Natalie gently.
“You did?” chorused the boys, all excitement.