“I hope there are enough sandwiches.”
“And a drinking cup.”
“What about matches?”
“Did you lock my trunk, Natalie?”
“What shall we do with the keys?”
The above are only samples. Three or more pages of similar import might be set down, but to no purpose. They were about to leave their camp, and, against the visits of an intruder they had locked most of their valuables such as they did not take with them—in their trunks. Then the tent-flaps had been carefully tied shut, a weird array of knots being used, having been copied from a boy-scout book that the Guardian had with her.
“If a burglar can untie those,” said Mrs. Bonnell as she finished the last one, “he’ll be so short tempered that he won’t bother to take the few little things we have left here.”
“But how can we untie them?” asked Marie.
“Oh, I can easily pick them out with a hairpin,” answered the resourceful Mrs. Bonnell. “Hairpins to a woman are what a screw-driver is to a man. I never could get along without them. From buttoning shoes to opening bottles of olives, they run the gamut of utility.”
The day was fair, with no promise of rain, but, even if it should come, the serviceable suits, of which each girl had two, would neither be damaged, nor would they readily permit of the wearers being drenched.