The Carter Girls' Week-End Camp Part 22

Their story was soon told and much was their amazement to learn that they were more than ten miles from Greendale.

"You must have been walking all day in the wrong direction. No wonder this poor little girl is limping. Now the first thing for us to do is to have something to eat."

"Ahem!" from Skeeter.

The spring-keeper smiled.

"Ah, methinks thou hast a lean and hungry look."

"Hungry's not the word. Starving Belgium is nothing to me. I feel as though I had had nothing to eat since yesterday."

"Oh, Skeeter! Think of all that lunch!" exclaimed Lil, lolling back luxuriously in the steamer chair with gra.s.s cloth cushions tucked in around her. "Why, Mr.--Mr.--Spring-keeper, he has done nothing but eat all day!"

"We think it is very hard on you for all of us to come piling in on you this way," said Lucy.

"Hard on us! Why, Tom t.i.t and I are so happy we hardly know what to do to show it," said the old man kindly. "But you must excuse me while I go prepare some food for you."

"But you must let us help!" from the girls, although Lil was rather perfunctory in her offers of a.s.sistance. She felt as though nothing short of dynamite could get her out of that chair.

"No, indeed! Tom t.i.t and I are famous cooks and we can get something ready in short order."

"Please, sir," said Frank, who had been very quiet while the others were telling their host of their adventures, "I--I--must not stop one moment to eat or anything else. I want you to tell me how to find my way back to Greendale so I can tell the people at the camp that Lucy and Lil are all right. They were put in our charge, and I must let them know."

"Of course, I am going, too," put in Skeeter, "but I thought I might eat first."

Everyone had to laugh at poor Skeeter's rueful countenance. The spring-keeper smiled broadly, but he patted Frank on the back.

"Have you a telephone at camp?"

"Yes, we had to put one in."

"Well, then, we'll just 'phone them even before we begin to cook our feast."

"'Phone! Have you a telephone here?" exclaimed Lucy.

"Yes, my dear young lady. I love the wildwood, but I have to know what's going on in the world. A man who does not take the good the G.o.ds provide him in the way of modern inventions is a fool. I may be a fool, but I'm not that kind of a fool."

"Lucy, you had better do the 'phoning so they'll know you girls are safe, first thing," suggested Frank.

"Yes, and it had better be done immediately," said their host. "Central in the mountains goes to roost very early, and you might not get connection. I'll call up Greendale and make them give me the camp."

Connection was got without much trouble and Lucy took the receiver.

"h.e.l.lo! Is that Camp Carter? Well, this is me."

"Lucy! Is it you?" in Helen's distracted tones from the other end.

"Yes, it's me, and all of us are all right, but we are going to spend the night out."

"Out where?"

"About ten miles from Greendale!"

"You mean outdoors?"

"Oh, no; with a spring-keeper!"

"A what? Oh, Lucy, are you crazy? We are so uneasy about all of you, we are nearly wild! It's dark as can be and we are trying to keep it from mother and father that you have not come home. Tell me where you are.

Speak distinctly and loudly and stop giggling." Of course the usual giggles had rendered Lucy unable to speak.

"Here, Skeeter, come and tell her!" she gasped.

"h.e.l.lo, Miss Helen! I'm Skeeter. The girls are all right. Yes, Frank and I are, too. We got lost somehow and never did find Jude Hanford's, but we found a kind gentleman who lives 'way over on another mountain and he is going to feed us right now."

"Who is the gentleman?"

"Mr. Spring-keeper is his name."

"You can't get home somehow tonight?"

"No'm! Lil is mighty tired and will have to rest up some. We'll be home tomorrow. You mustn't worry about the girls--they're all right and the gentleman is bully. We'll tell you all about it when we see you. Say, Miss Helen, the lunch was out of sight."

"You bet it was when once Skeeter got his hooks into it," muttered Frank. "The supper will be, too, in no time."

"Well, good-bye, Skeeter! We are still trusting you and Frank to take care of our girls and bring them back safely. I knew all the time you were doing your best, although I was uneasy about all of you. I was afraid you had shot each other or snakes had bitten you or something."

"Not on your life! We shot some squirrels and got you some fox grapes, though. Good-bye! Good-bye!"

"I tell you, Miss Helen is a peach," he added to Frank, after he hung up the receiver. "She is still trusting us."

CHAPTER XVI

TOM t.i.t

"I'm dying to know who he is and what he is," whispered Lil to Lucy, as they tidied themselves up a bit in the neat little room to which the gray-bearded host had shown them.

"So'm I! Did you ever see such a cute little room? It looks like a stateroom on the steamboat. Do you reckon we will sleep in here?"

It was a tiny little room with one great window. Two bunks were built in the wall opposite the window, one over the other. A little mirror hung over a shelf whereon the girls found a white celluloid comb and brush, spotlessly clean--indeed, the whole room was so clean that one doubted its ever having been occupied. The floor was scrubbed until Lucy said it reminded her of a well-kept kitchen table. A rag rug was the only decoration the room boasted and that was a beautiful thing of brilliant hue. The walls were whitewashed, also the doors, of which there were two, one opening into the main room and the other one, the girls fancied, into a cupboard.

"Ain't it grand we got lost?" from Lil, as she made a vain endeavor to see her sunburned nose in the mirror that was hung so high she was sure Mr. Spring-keeper had never had a female visitor before, or if he had, it had been a giantess.

"Hurry up! Your nose is all right.--Maybe we can help him some, and I'm just dying to hear the story of his life. Do you reckon he will tell us all about himself and poor Tom t.i.t without our pumping him? I believe he is a king or something."