The Outdoor Girls at the Hostess House Part 7

"Oh, boy!" cried Roy ecstatically, setting down the hamper that had been his share and beginning to examine its contents without further delay.

"Chicken! Ham sandwiches! Biscuits! Jelly--"

"Say, get out of that!" cried Frank, s.n.a.t.c.hing the hamper away with a vigor born of fear. "What kind of manners do you call that?"

"They're as good as yours," retorted the outraged Roy hotly. "Besides, there's another hamper, isn't there?"

"Goodness, they seem to think they can have a whole basket apiece," cried Amy Blackford in dismay.

"Well, I guess they've got another think coming," said Allen, inelegantly, placing himself with outstretched arms before the two precious hampers as though he were guarding a gold mine. "Now let him come who dares. Only over my dead body--"

"Oh, what's the use of spoiling our perfectly good party," complained Grace. "Can't we ever begin to enjoy ourselves but what somebody starts taking all the joy out of life by talking about killing somebody, or something--"

"Never mind, Gracie," Frank soothed her, nibbling a chicken bone with great relish. "You'll get over it. It may take time--"

"Silence," commanded Mollie, raising a pickle fork threateningly. "Else in a twinkling I will split thee to the heart--"

"Goodness, she's got it, too," sighed Grace drawlingly.

"What?" asked Mollie briskly, "I'm always interested in my symptoms--"

"It isn't a disease, you goose," drawled Grace. "Unless," she added, as a second thought, "you can call insanity a disease--"

"Well, you ought to know," retorted Mollie, as she proceeded to use the pickle fork to advantage. "What does your doctor say?"

"Now who's bringing war into the party, I'd like to know?" asked Will, helping himself to his ninth biscuit.

"Goodness, that's just the usual thing," Betty explained, looking prettier, so Allen thought, than ever before with the background of lacy green to set off her bright coloring. "If they don't behave like that we know they're sick or something. Do have another biscuit, Roy. Goodness,"

and she stared round-eyed down into the empty s.p.a.ce where the biscuits had been, "they're every one gone! Who did eat them all?"

"Well, you needn't look at me," said Frank in an aggrieved tone. "Will's the fellow you've got to watch."

Will was about to utter some scathing retort when Grace, who had gotten up to shake the crumbs from her dress and had walked down toward the road, suddenly called to them. It was such an excited, urgent call that they left everything and came running.

"What--" began Betty.

"It was the motorcyclist!" cried Grace, her face flaming. "I couldn't have been mistaken, because I caught a good view of his face."

"But what was he doing back here?" demanded Amy, while the rest stared at Grace excitedly. "That's only a rutty old wagon road, and--"

"Well, he was b.u.mping and bouncing like everything, and when he caught sight of me he sent his machine ahead so fast I thought surely he'd have a smash-up."

"Wish he had," said gentle Amy, and at the unusually vindictive expression on her face the others had to laugh.

"Well, there's nothing more we can do now," said Frank practically. "Let's go back and finish our lunch. Probably," he added, as they thoughtfully retraced their steps, "he took the wagon road for fear of running into one of you girls."

"Big coward!" cried Betty, with clenched hands. "I wish I had been with you, Grace, we might have stopped him."

The boys shouted.

"Such a chance!" crowed Roy, but Betty turned on them with flashing eyes.

"Well, we might at least have tried," she cried hotly. "That is more than you boys would have done. You don't seem to be even interested," she continued indignantly. "If I were a man in uniform I'd show that coward that he can't knock old helpless women down and then run away. I'd show him that in insulting an old woman he was insulting the whole United States army--"

"Hurrah!" cried Will irrepressibly, jumping to his feet. "Now you're talking, Betty. How about it, fellows? Shall we do as she says?"

"You bet we will!" they cried, and at the ring in their voices, even Betty's ardent little heart was satisfied.

CHAPTER VII

A LARK IN THE OPEN

"Well, where do we go from here, boys?" asked Allen, lazily stretching out on the gra.s.s with a convenient, raised bank of moss for a pillow, while the girls repacked the depleted hampers. "It's such a wonderful day, and camp was never like this."

"Tell us something we don't know," Frank retorted. "Gee, it's been a fine experience and all, but, believe me, I'll be glad when the call comes for action."

"They're off again," said Grace plaintively.

"I must say you're not awfully complimentary," added Mollie, busily folding napkins.

"In what way, sweet maid, do we offend?" Will inquired.

"Oh, always talking about how glad you'll be to get away from us," she explained. "Here we thought we'd been entertaining you so beautifully--"

"Gee, you have!" cried Roy, propping himself on his elbow and speaking with unaccustomed solemnity. "It's been just great, having you girls here."

"It certainly has," added Frank. "I guess we'd have gone clean crazy because of homesickness if you hadn't come along just when you did."

"Now you're saying something," added Allen warmly, while the girls stopped packing and looked on happily. "Do you remember what we were talking about that day when we almost--"

"Ran into what we were talking about?" finished Frank with a grin. "You bet I do."

"Well, what was it?" drawled Grace, after they had waited patiently for the boys to continue and the latter had smiled aggravatingly to themselves over their thoughts.

"If it's bad," added Mollie briskly, "we don't want to hear it, for, as the old lady said that used to come to see Mother regularly once a year, 'I don't care what terrible things people say or think about me, if they don't tell me about it,' But if it's good--we might stand it."

"Oh, it was good all right," Frank a.s.sured her, still smiling over his thoughts. "We were saying that if we didn't get a furlough so we could go back to Deepdale--"

"For a certain purpose," suggested Will.

"For a certain purpose," Frank repeated solemnly--"we were afraid we might have to desert."

"Yes, that would have been sensible," scoffed Mollie. "Get half a dozen years in prison for yourselves and I'd like to know where your furloughs would be then."

"And you haven't really told us a single nice thing about ourselves,"

added Betty plaintively. "All the time we've just been holding our breath to listen--"