Keineth Part 11

"Yes, Billy." "Come on, I'll play tennis with you! Bet you can beat me, too!"

Keineth suddenly remembered Peggy's and Billy's rudeness. Perhaps Billy was trying to make amends. She really wanted to be alone with her letter a little longer, but if Billy wanted her to play! She felt proud, too, that he had asked her.

Billy found less difficulty than he had antic.i.p.ated in letting Keineth win the set. In fact, deep in his heart, he was not sure he had "let"

her. For Keineth, fired with the joy within her, played brilliantly, flying over the court like a winged creature, returning Billy's serves with a surprising quickness and strength that completely broke down his boyish confidence in himself.

"Thanks awfully--that _was_ fun," Keineth said as they sank down under a tree for a moment's rest.

Though his plan had worked very well so far, Billy now felt at a loss to know how he ought to proceed. So, accepting her thanks with a brief nod, he bolted straight to the point.

"Say, Ken, if you'll tell me about your father I promise on my scout's honor not to tell a soul! And you ought to tell me anyway, for didn't my dog save your life, and didn't I give you first aid or you might've died!"

"Oh, Billy!" Keineth cried, then stopped short. Her heart warmed to Billy--they seemed almost like pals now! He had preferred playing tennis with her than going off somewhere with the boys. And she did want more than anything else right then to talk about her daddy; to tell how great he was and how he was visiting courts of Eastern lands.

And she wanted to show Billy the letter from the President, it was in her pocket. And she knew if Billy said he'd never tell that he would not.

But a soldier never swerves from duty and had not her father called her his "General"?

"I--I can't, Billy," she finished.

There was something so final in her voice and in the set of her lips that Billy, red with rage, rose quickly to his feet.

"I'll bet you haven't got any secret and you're just making up to be smart and I'll get even with you, baby! And you didn't beat me playing tennis, for I let you, anyway! You wait--" and, vengefully, Billy strode away, leaving an unhappy little girl sitting alone under the tree. Peggy met Billy on the road. Peggy was in search of Keineth. Her nature was too happy to long nurse a grievance. She didn't care if Keineth did have a secret! And she had wonderful news, too!

But Billy's morose bearing stirred her curiosity.

"Did she tell you, Billy?" she asked.

"I'll bet she hasn't got any secret that's worth knowing! And she needn't say she beat me at tennis, either."

"Oh, Billy Lee, you let her beat so's she'd tell you! I'm just _glad_ she didn't! I guess girls never tell anything they've promised not to--even if they are girls!"

In great scorn she ran from the disconsolate Billy. She had spied Keineth alone under the tree.

"Ken--Ken! Great news!" Peggy rushed toward her. "We are going camping with Ricky--you and me--next week! Hurray!"

CHAPTER XIII

CAMPING

Keineth learned that Ricky was Peggy's gymnasium teacher. Her real name was Fredericka Grimball, but to "her girls" she was always known as Ricky. The camp was among the hills ten miles from Fairview. And during the vacation months Ricky took her girls there in groups of twenty.

With their play she gave them instruction in scoutcraft.

"We go for tramps into the woods and she tells us stories of the birds and trees. I never knew until she told me that there are male and female trees, and flowers and all the things that grow; did you know it, Ken? And we found a weasel, last summer--it was almost tame. We're going to learn signalling, too; perhaps this winter Ricky will let us form a troop and join the Girl Scouts."

Keineth, with wide-open eyes, was trying to follow Peggy's incoherent description of the camp life they were to begin on the morrow. Back in her mind was a tiny doubt as to whether she would enjoy twenty girls--all strangers! But she would fight this shyness and do whatever Peggy did.

"We sleep right out of doors when it is clear. The woods smell so good and there are all sorts of funny sounds as if all the bugs and things were having parties."

"Oh-h, I wonder if I'll like it!" and Keineth shivered with pleasurable dread.

"We paddle in canoes on a little lake that's like a mill-pond. It's awfully shallow and the water is so clear you can see right through it, and we ride horseback, too! I'm a patrol leader," Peggy finished with pride. She folded the last middy blouse neatly into a wicker suitcase.

Their luggage consisted of bloomers, blouses, bathing-suits and blankets.

"Easy to remember--all B's," Mrs. Lee had laughed.

Mr. Lee drove them to the camp. "Come back with some muscle in these arms of yours and a few more freckles on your nose," he said to Keineth, pinching her cheek affectionately.

"Camp Wachita"--the girls had nicknamed it Camp Wish-no-more--was nestled in the hills with the tiny lake at its front door and a dense woodland at its back. Sleeping tents were built in a semicircle about the central building, in which were the living-rooms. On a gra.s.sy level stretch close to the water was the out-of-door gymnasium and beyond that the boathouse and dock to which several gaily-painted canoes were fastened.

The family at Camp Wachita consisted of Martha Washington Jones, the colored cook; Bonsey, her twelve-year-old son, who very occasionally made himself useful about the camp; Captain O'Leary, a Spanish War Veteran by t.i.tle and by occupation caretaker of the horses and boats; Miky, the little Irish terrier, and Jim Crow, who had been brought, the summer before, to the camp hospital from the woodland to receive first aid for a broken wing, and had refused to leave the family.

Keineth had little difficulty in making friends with the other girls.

There seemed to be among them such a jolly spirit of comradeship that she found it very easy to call them Jessie and Nellie and Kate, and never once wondered at their quickly adopting Peggy's familiar "Ken."

She thought that Peggy must have known them all very well and was surprised when Peggy told her that there were only three of her friends among them.

"But we're all Ricky's girls, you see," she explained, as though that was all that was necessary to create a firm bond of loyalty and friendship among them.

"Ricky," this captain of girls, was a tall, straight, broad-shouldered woman of twenty-five. The sunniness of her smile, the firmness of her jaw and the all-understanding warmth of her dark eyes told of the character which made her a leader of others and a spirit beloved among them all.

Each new day of the camp life brought to Keineth some new experience, thrilling in its strangeness to the little girl. She had learned to love going to sleep with the great, star-lit vault of the sky enveloping her; the singing of the "bugs," as Peggy had put it, was fairy music to her ears; she had conquered her first terror of the sh.e.l.l-like canoes and now could paddle with confidence, even venturing alone upon the shallow water. And to her own surprise she was enjoying the companionship of the other girls!

Among them was one named Stella Maybeck. Stella was not an attractive girl--she was too tall and too thin, her voice was loud and her manners a little careless. She had big, dark eyes with a hungry look in their depths. She adored Ricky and showed a preference for Keineth's company.

At first Keineth felt a little repelled by the girl's rough ways, but gradually she grew to feel that beneath them was a warm, kind heart and that it was, perhaps, shyness that often made Stella's manner disagreeable.

They walked together on the tramps into the woods and Keineth enjoyed the fund of knowledge the other girl seemed to have concerning all the little woodland creatures and their ways.

"I don't see why you like to be with Stella Maybeck," Peggy had said to her one day. "I think she is horrid!" she finished unkindly.

"Why, Peggy!" Keineth frowned. It was very unfair in Peggy to speak in this way concerning one of the other girls. Keineth did not suspect that perhaps a little jealousy prompted Peggy's ungraciousness.

This little cloud was to grow over the whole camp. And in the second week Ricky's girls learned a lesson of greater value to them than all the scoutcraft they loved.

Twice a week the vegetable man came to the camp with fruit and vegetables. These the girls placed in the storehouse, one of them carefully checking off the purchases as they did so. One morning some oranges were reported missing. Ricky paid little attention to the incident. The next day one of the girls came to her and announced that a ring had been taken from her sleeping tent. Although disturbed, Miss Grimball gently rebuked the girl for having disobeyed the camp rules in bringing jewelry to it and sent her away, bidding her speak to no one of her loss.

Then Miss Grimb.a.l.l.s silver purse containing ten dollars in bills was taken from her desk!

Like a flash the story spread through the camp. The girls gathered in an excited group. Keineth and Stella, with arms locked, stood together.

From the other side of the group Peggy saw them. The jealousy that had been slumbering within her heart suddenly gripped her.

"Well, I think I could guess who did it, all right, and I just think it's a shame for anyone like that to I dare to come to Ricky's camp!"

It was not necessary to do more than fix her gaze indignantly upon Stella Maybeck. With a little gasp Stella turned and ran into her tent.

The others pressed closer to Peggy.

"Oh, do you think so?" they whispered in awed voices.