“Come now, folks, it’s my hair. I’m not doing anything at all about it, and what a waste of time and opportunity to discuss such a subject here! Come on, girls, we must fix up the beds. Dal, please help us with the cots, and did you think what a fine dresser that big box will make, girls? It has a division in it, you remember. We’ll set it on end, put a cover on it over some paper, tack a curtain across, and there will be our dressing table, with a big shelf behind the curtain. I’m wasted in the schoolroom, Sarita. I ought to be an interior decorator. To-morrow some of those pretty spruce limbs will make a fine background for our mirror!”
“Beth! Did you honestly buy that mirror in the store by the station? Dal, it’s the funniest thing you ever saw and we look crooked in it. Beth must have liked it because it makes her look fat!”
Springing up, the party of four piled their plates and cups on the table, where Sarita busied herself in repacking the food in its containers and the others went into the larger tent. There trunks and boxes had been left in confusion.
In a short time Dalton had the three cots up and took another to his own tent, which stood opposite the larger one. Leslie had suggested the arrangement, insisting that they must live on an “Avenue.” Elizabeth and Leslie were now drawing both woolen and cotton blankets from a big trunk of supplies, together with four warm bathrobes. Sarita came in just in time to seize upon hers with an exclamation of welcome. “We’ll probably want to sleep in ’em,” she said, with an exaggerated shiver, putting on the garment over her sweater while Leslie laughed at her.
Trunks were pulled around into place, boxes piled out of the way, flashlights and the convenient bags or cases, with which they had traveled, found and placed by their owners’ cots. On the rude dresser, to be made more attractive in the future, a candlestick, candle and a box of matches stood ready if needed, “And if anybody lights the candle, let him beware of burning up the place!” warned Beth.
“Her, not ‘him,’ Beth,” corrected Leslie. “The only ‘him’ has a tent of his own. I’m going to see, too, that Dal has enough blankets on his bed and everything. No, keep out, Beth. Don’t worry; I’ll think of just exactly what we have that he must have, too. Say, what did we do with those towels? Thanks. Dal is grand to do things for us, but when it comes to fixing up himself,—” Leslie ran across the boulevard, which Sarita now called the space between the tents, and the girls smiled as they heard her arguing with Dalton about something.
“Listen, Dal! It gets cold up here. I’ve known girls that camped in Maine. I know that you’re hot-blooded and all that. I’ll just tuck these blankets in at the foot, and I know that you’ll want to draw them up by morning.”
Some bass murmur came from her brother and then the girls heard Leslie’s more carrying voice. “No, I’ll brace them back on this box and then they won’t be too heavy on your feet. Well, have it your own way, then, but if you freeze, I’ll not be responsible!”
Leslie was grinning herself, when she came into the girls’ tent and saw Sarita shaking with laughter, as she sat on the edge of her cot undressing. “We couldn’t help hear, Les!” she said. “The boulevard should be wider. What was it beside the blanket discussion?”
“The last thing he said to me was ‘Can’t you let a guy go to bed?’—but he was laughing and lifted the flap of the tent for me with a most ridiculous bow. Dal’s the funniest thing!”