"If we hadn't spent a whole half-day chasing around Queensville and back again, we might have had a good walk in the woods and maybe we would have found those three stones," growled Dave MacLester, toasting his hands over the campfire, for the evening had come on quite cold.
"Never mind, little one, never mind! You'll feel better after you've had your supper. Your poor, 'ittle tummy wants something. You'll feel better pretty soon." This language in a soft, fatherly tone from Paul Jones caused a smile. Even David smiled, too, for directly afterward Chef Billy announced the evening meal.
It was a pleasant thing to sit before the glowing fire, enjoying toasted crackers and toasted cheese after the major portion of the supper—baked beans, baked potatoes and bacon, and coffee, of course—was over. It was a pleasant thing to creep under the blankets in the tent, luxuriously tired, an hour and a half later.
Most exquisitely pleasant was it, also, to lie snug and comfortable listening to the tinkle of the little spring where the water flowed over the miniature cataract leading to the cleverly devised cooling system, and so to fall asleep at last.
CHAPTER XIV
AT THE CLARION RACING CAMP
The arrival of the Chosen Trio in Queensville did not occasion the excitement in that small city that at least Mr. Gaines had anticipated. Possibly there would have been a more noticeable interest had it not been that strangers and strange cars had already become, on account of the numbers present for the races, a drug on the market. Queensville people had grown quickly accustomed to the presence of visitors. Beyond a passing glance the lumbering Roadster and its passengers received little notice, therefore.
Soapy had counted so much upon the demonstration of lively interest the arrival of himself, his car and Pickton and Perth—whom he regarded as a kind of body-guard—would occasion that to attract little or none of such curious attention was a serious blow to his vanity.
The fault, Mr. Gaines in his own mind assured himself, lay in the very ordinary appearance of his friends. He would have to let it be known, he concluded, that he alone was the owner of the Roadster and that he, if not those with him, was a person of quite some consequence.