"No call for that, ma'am. You've shown you can get along all right. We didn't have nothin' to do with gettin' Miss Dolly away from that scamp today. It was her chum done that. Goodbye."
CHAPTER XV
A FRIENDLY CONTEST
Morning found both Dolly and Bessie refreshed, and, though the other girls asked them anxiously about themselves, neither seemed to feel any ill effects after the excitement of the previous day, with its series of surprising events. Dolly, at first, was a little chastened, and seemed wholly ready to stay quietly in camp. And, indeed, all the girls decided that it would be better, for the time at least, not to venture far into the woods.
"I think it's as safe as ever now, along the well-known trails that are used all the time," said Miss Eleanor, "but, after all, we don't know much about the gypsies. Some of them may be hanging around still, even if the main party of them has moved on, and we do know that they are a revengeful race; that when one of them is hurt, or injured in any way, they are very likely not to rest until the injury is avenged. They don't care much whether they hurt the person who is guilty or not; his relatives or his friends will satisfy them equally well"
"I'm perfectly willing to stay right here by the lake," said Margery Burton, "for one. It's as nice here as it can possibly be anywhere else. I'd like someone to go in swimming with me."
"If it isn't too cold I will," cried Dolly, cheerfully.
And so, after the midday meal—two hours afterward, too, for Eleanor Mercer was too wise a Guardian to allow them to run any risk by going into the water before their food had been thoroughly digested—bathing suits were brought out, and Margery Burton, or Minnehaha, as the one who had proposed the sport, was unanimously elected a committee of one to try the water, and see if it was warm enough for swimming.
"And no tricks, Margery!" warned Dolly. "I know you, and if you found it was cold it would be just like you to pretend it was fine so that we'd all get in and be as cold as you were yourself!"