“Oh, joy!” shouted Hazel. “All our dresses were in the chest. Who put them there?”
“I did,” answered Tommy. “I have thenthe thometimeth.”
A weak cheer greeted this announcement. Their dresses were dry, after all. Much of their trouble being thus banished the girls’ spirits rose, and soon thereafter they were laughing and chattering, unmindful of their bedraggled and thoroughly uncomfortable condition.
Suddenly Jane McCarthy uttered a cry.
“The ropes are broken—broken right off near the stakes, I should judge,” she called excitedly.
“That is strange,” replied Harriet. “The ropes are too strong to break so easily. The stakes would have pulled up before the ropes would break. Let me see.”
Harriet took the end of a guy-rope that Jane extended toward her, and looked at it closely. She ran to where the tent had been pitched and began tugging at a stake, which came up after no little effort on her part. This stake she carried back to Jane and held it before her companion, a piece of the broken rope dangling from it.
“See, Jane?”
“Well, darlin’, didn’t I tell you? The rope broke off just as I said.”
“You are mistaken, Jane, dear.”