The Girls of Central High in Camp: or, the Old Professor's Secret. Morrison Gertrude W.
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.
“We-ell,” drawled Bobby. “There’s the chance of having somebody to do the camp work for us–”
“Not Lil!” shrieked Jess. “She never lifts her hand at home.”
“No,” said Nell. “But Mrs. Pendleton will pay a maid’s wages.”
“Ah – ha!” ejaculated Jess Morse. “I smell a mice, as the Dutchman says. We are to be bribed.”
And bribed they were. At least, none of them wished to put Laura’s mother to any trouble. So they agreed to let Lily Pendleton go camping with them. Mrs. Pendleton left it to the girls to find anyone they wanted to help about the camp, and promised to pay good wages.
“I know just whom we can get,” Bobby said, eagerly, that evening when the girls – and some of the boys – were assembled as usual on the Belding front porch.
“Who’s that?”
“That Bean girl,” said the groceryman’s daughter.
“Who’s she? Miss Boston Bean?” chuckled Chet.
“Lizzie Bean! I know who she is,” exclaimed Laura.
“She’s the girl who’s been helping the Longs since Alice came back to school. Now Alice will keep house for her father and the other children again, and Lizzie will be out of a job,” explained Bobby.
“Whew! ‘Lonesome Liz?’” ejaculated Lance Darby. “Short and Long calls her that. Says she’s about half cracked–”
“I guess she isn’t cracked enough to hurt,” said Dora Lockwood, quickly. “Is she, Dorothy?”
“Of course not,” agreed her twin. “And she keeps the house beautifully clean, and looks after Tommy fine.”
“Let me tell you Master Tommy Long is some kid to look after,” chuckled Chet.
“And that’s no dream,” agreed his chum, Lance.
Bobby began to laugh, too. “Did you hear his latest?” she demanded of the crowd.
“Who’s latest,” asked Jess.
“Tommy Long – the infant terrible?”
“Let’s hear it, Bobs,” said Jess. “If he can say anything worse than you can–”
“But this break on Master Tommy’s part was entirely unintentional. Alice was telling me about it. She sends him to Sunday School and he has to memorize the Golden Text and repeat it to her when he comes home.
“The other Sunday he had been skylarking in Sunday School, it was evident, for when she asked him to tell her the text, he shot this one at her: ‘Don’t worry. You’ll get the blanket.’”
“What?” gasped Laura.
“That’s a teaser,” said Lance. “What did the kid mean?”
“That’s what troubled Alice,” chuckled Bobby. “She couldn’t get it at all; but Tommy stuck to it that he had given her the text straight. So she looked it up herself and what do you suppose Tommy