"All of you keep away from here," ordered the guide. "I'll lose my reputation if what we have already experienced gets out. Nobody will want a guide who can't take care of his party better than I've done."
"You aren't to blame," replied Harriet. "It has been just Meadow-Brook luck, that is all. We always have plenty of excitement. Why, it is tripping right along ahead of us all the time, though we do not always catch sight of it until too late to stop. We will keep away from the Slide until morning. I want to see it before we leave, and so do the other girls. Maybe we might have some fun bowling stones down it. Are there any big ones that we may roll down, Mr. Grubb?"
"There's a whole mountain of them."
"Hooray!" cried Crazy Jane. "We will have a rolling bee in the morning, and Margery and Tommy shall bring the stones for us."
"Yeth. Buthter will fetch the thtoneth, too. It will be good exerthithe for her."
"Grace Thompson, if you don't stop making remarks about me I'll never speak to you again as long as I live," threatened Margery.
Tommy did not reply to this awful threat. She appeared to ponder deeply over it, then, edging up closer to her companion, gazed up into the latter's face with twinkling eyes.
"Do you mean that, really and truly?"
"Yes, I do."
Tommy shook her head.