"It feels like one, too," replied Jean, still grave. "With Bengal crying all over the place and Miss Judy looking so cut up it's enough to dampen everybody's spirits."
Talk lapsed between the two and each went on cleaning up her side of the tent. A moment later, however, Jean's dimples came back again when she came upon Katherine's toothbrush in one of her tennis shoes. That toothbrush had disappeared two days before and the tent had been turned upside down in a vain search for it.
Katherine pounced upon the truant toilet article gleefully. "Look in your other shoe," she begged Jean, "and see if you can find my fountain pen. That's missing too."
Jean obligingly shook out her shoe, but no pen came to light.
"There's something dark in the bottom of the water pitcher," announced
Oh-Pshaw, who was setting the toilet table to rights. "Maybe that's it."
She bared her arm to the elbow and plunged it into the water, but withdrew it immediately with a shriek that caused Katherine and Jean to drop their bed-making in alarm.
"What's the matter?" asked Katherine.
"It's an animal, a horrid, dead animal!" Oh-Pshaw gasped shudderingly, backing precipitously away from the water pitcher. "It's furry, and soft, and—ugh! stiff!"
"What is it?" demanded Katherine, peering curiously into the pitcher, in whose slightly turbid depths she could see a dark object lying.
"Don't touch it!" begged Oh-Pshaw, as Katherine's hand went down into the water.