"I'll bet she hasn't got any secret that's worth knowing! And she needn't say she beat me at tennis, either."
"Oh, Billy Lee, you let her beat so's she'd tell you! I'm just _glad_ she didn't! I guess girls never tell anything they've promised not to--even if they are girls!"
In great scorn she ran from the disconsolate Billy. She had spied Keineth alone under the tree.
"Ken--Ken! Great news!" Peggy rushed toward her. "We are going camping with Ricky--you and me--next week! Hurray!"
CHAPTER XIII
CAMPING
Keineth learned that Ricky was Peggy's gymnasium teacher. Her real name was Fredericka Grimball, but to "her girls" she was always known as Ricky. The camp was among the hills ten miles from Fairview. And during the vacation months Ricky took her girls there in groups of twenty. With their play she gave them instruction in scoutcraft.
"We go for tramps into the woods and she tells us stories of the birds and trees. I never knew until she told me that there are male and female trees, and flowers and all the things that grow; did you know it, Ken? And we found a weasel, last summer--it was almost tame. We're going to learn signalling, too; perhaps this winter Ricky will let us form a troop and join the Girl Scouts."
Keineth, with wide-open eyes, was trying to follow Peggy's incoherent description of the camp life they were to begin on the morrow. Back in her mind was a tiny doubt as to whether she would enjoy twenty girls--all strangers! But she would fight this shyness and do whatever Peggy did.