Mrs. Livingston's face was flushed, her eyes snapped; then her angry expression softened and she burst out laughing.
"O Jane, Jane! You will be the undoing of all of us before you have done."
Jane, with her hair disheveled, stood ruefully surveying the scene.
"I'm sorry, Mrs. Livingston, that you went over. I didn't want to make you fall down, but I just had to show Daddy how glad I was to see him."
"You showed me all right, young lady. Lucky, for us all that we had soft ground under us. Mrs. Livingston, I suppose you'll be telling me to take this mad-cap daughter of mine home with me. I shouldn't blame you if you did, and I don't think I'd cry over it, for I want her. No, I don't mean that—"
"Daddy!" rebuked Jane.
"I mean that she is better off here, and you are doing her a heap of good, Mrs. Livingston, even if she did give way to one of her old fits of violence just now."
"Certainly not, Mr. McCarthy," answered the Chief Guardian promptly. "We all love Jane. She is a splendid girl and we should miss her. I certainly did miss her last summer, and now I should miss her more than ever. I hope we shall have her with us for many summers; then one of these days, when she is older, she, too, will have a camp of girls to look after."
"I feel very thorry for the camp," broke in Tommy.
"You will have to buy a new camp stool, Daddy," reminded Jane. "I'm glad I'm not so stout that I break up the furniture every time I sit on it."