“I need rubbers, too.”
“Very well. But girls that need rubbers will not go with this group. These girls will start first with Miss West, who will buy their shoes. They will go in the Truant and leave at once with a few others that I will send.”
“Going to Bath” at camp is like going “down town” or “upstreet” at home. It is surprising how many little errands one thinks of when separated from the shops. The weather, too, makes more difference when at camp and dependent upon boats. But how great the advantages! How the girls all loved the camp life, enjoying all the more the occasional trips to the towns about. Today there was perfect weather, the river never more blue from an almost cloudless sky. An eagle swept across above the boat. A kingfisher dived into the water near the shore. Yellow-billed gulls floated up and down with the movement of the waves. A little sandpiper hurried his flight from the rocks not far away to a grassy cove. The girls sang happily the Merrymeeting songs till all the shore dwellers must have known who was passing. As they passed Boothbay Camp, a few of the boys who happened to be about waved and gave the Boothbay and Merrymaking yells.
Arrived at Bath, each feminine party, with some councillor, applied itself to the delights of shopping, whether necessary or not. Patricia’s party bought the desired hiking shoes or other covering for active feet.
Just before time to go to the boat, a certain time having been agreed upon, one of the drug stores was almost full of girls, and, indeed, councillors, having a sundae or soda before departing. Suddenly two of the little Juniors came rushing in and up to Miss West.
“O, Miss West, we’ve spent all our money and have just found the darlingest gold lockets, only five dollars and a half, and we want to send one to our mothers. Please, Miss West! O, my daddy’ll settle for it right away. Yes, he will. Yes, my mother will want it and I don’t want it for myself at all. Please!”
The tears were very near, as the children worked themselves up to the point that they must have the lockets and that it was mean that Miss West would not lend them the camp money or her own. But Patricia was firm, though kind, and succeeded in turning their attention to something else. Cathalina, who sat at a little table near whispered to Miss West that she would lend them the money. “O, not for the world,” she replied. “Their parents have left money for them at the office and they can spend only so much. Of course they have no idea of the value of money, and we must manage for them.”
But it was a very well satisfied group of children that started for Merrymeeting about four o’clock that afternoon, with their little boxes of candy and other trifles, as well as the more important things for which they had come.
CHAPTER VII
MORNING IN MAINE
One would not think that forty or fifty girls could go on a hike without making such a noise that any well regulated bird would immediately take to the deepest wood. Under the direction, however, of the little lady whom the girls affectionately called “Mother Nature”, “Birdie”, or “Puss in Boots” when she donned rubber boots, the first bird hike was quite successful. The girls slipped quietly down the grassy road, or stood on the rocks together, and the little Maine warblers who were out getting their breakfast never paid a bit of attention. The big pine tree by the side of the road was full of pine siskins, and every so often a Maryland yellow-throat would pop up from some bush, exhibit his bright yellow breast and black mask, and drop back again.