CHAPTER XXIII
MYSTIFICATION
“Anything missing?” gasped Mrs. Bonnell, as she came up the slope from the lake, whither Natalie had sped in advance.
“Don’t you dare tell us there is!” cried Marie.
“There doesn’t seem to be,” went on the Guardian, whose rather short breath bore to her the unwelcome intelligence that she was getting stout. “I really must exercise more,” she told herself. “I am positively getting indolent, and in camp—of all things!”
“Everything seems to be as we left it,” declared Natalie after a hurried glance around, while Mrs. Bonnell sat down on a board nailed between two trees making a rustic seat.
“They could easily have opened our tent, gone in and tied the flaps back again,” suggested Alice. “Do hurry and look in, Nat!” for breath-of-the-pine-tree was fumbling with the knots of the cords.
“We must learn to tie some of the queer knots the boy scouts have in their manual book,” suggested Mabel.
By this time Natalie had succeeded in loosening the tent-flaps. With the boys gathered in a circle back of them the girls peered into their sleeping and living quarters.
“Everything seems all right,” murmured Natalie.