“That’s better,” came from Morning-Glory, Miles’s partner in that playground rescue.
“Stack said the girl who helped was a pippin.” Here the Astronomer who had been dozing upon the firelit sands suddenly awoke from a dream in which Penelope’s red cheek was a poisoned cherry and he a chewink pecking at it to his destruction. “He said she was a peach and could do something,” went on Tenderfoot Tommy; “that she wasn’t all fluff an’ stuff or frills an’ stuff, like most girls, afraid of a little wetting!”
“Oh! indeed? A lot he must know about girls!” Every voice in the feminine circle went to swell this sarcasm or something like it.
Each feminine soul there felt that life could not be all mystic motions and ceremonial dresses, their rich cream at present, nor yet bloomers and middy blouses; all looked forward to the pleasing variety of frilly hours again, with hearts, if only for the space of a short party-hour, correspondingly frivolous.
Meanwhile the Astronomer, with his gaze slanting upward from the sands and trained upon the feminine circle, was suffering at the hands of Kenjo who had tried to stifle his confidences.
“Oh! Won’t Stack just lick you when we get back to camp and he hears how you gave him away?” scolded the older Scout. “You go to sleep again; that’s the only time you’re safe, Fatty. We’re going to ask the Kullibígan top another question, something exciting, with real ‘pep’ in it, this time: ‘Who’s going to dig up a fortune from the sands?’ May I come in on the answer to this?” Ken appealed eagerly to the Guardian of the Camp Fire.
“Certainly. And may you come in on the fortune, too, if there is one!” Thus Gheezies gave her smiling consent, tagging it with a good wish.
“Oh! that’s too far-fetched to be exciting; nobody really believes in finding Captain Kidd’s treasure nowadays, although Captain Andy says that some of it was certainly hidden along the coast here, but that the tidal current must have sucked it out into the river long ago,” protested Betty, in a fringed flutter.
“And Stack says that he met a professor of something who was round here studying tides, and the prof said he didn’t believe that the current could do any such thing!” threw back Ken hotly.
“Oh! it’s such a hackneyed old question, anyway.” Thus Morning-Glory backed up Betty.