“Oh, such slang!” gasped his sister.
“They’ll never come back here if they really have that ring,” was Blake’s opinion—one that was shared by others.
But the matter of going camping to Green Lake had, in a measure, taken the edge off the sorrow felt over Mrs. Anderson’s loss—at least on the part of the four girls.
They had arranged, through the Camp Fire Guardian, Mrs. Bonnell, to get their suits, and then they seriously began to consider the matter of going camping. After some consideration the respective parents of the pretty quartette had consented, especially since Mrs. Bonnell was to be with them, and she had often gone to the woods with her late husband, though she frankly admitted that she knew very little about practical woodlore.
“Oh, but that’s all the better!” exclaimed Natalie. “We can learn for ourselves, and if we do make mistakes, we won’t repeat them. It will be jolly fun!”
“And if we get into real difficulties the boys won’t be so very far away,” added practical Alice, for Jack and his chums had followed up the idea, casually expressed, and had decided to spend their vacation on the shores of Green Lake. Perhaps this is one reason why the parents of the girls had consented to the young ladies roughing it for a time, since three well-developed brothers might well look after three sisters, and a brotherless girl into the bargain.
“We’ll each share a third of a brother with you, Nat,” offered Mabel.
“Which is very kind of you, maiden-of-the-green-corn,” replied the breath-of-the-pine-tree, with a laugh that showed her white, even teeth.
There was much to do. Fortunately the academy where the boys and girls attended, closed two weeks earlier that term to allow of extensive repairs to be made to the building, so that it was possible to spend part of the rare month of June in the woods.
For the boys, who had often gone camping, it was not so difficult, but to the girls the work of arranging for tents, cots, a camping site, the necessary cooking utensils, an oil stove, and seeing about other matters came rather hard.