“This camp couldn’t possibly be blown away even by the strongest wind,” broke in Billie, ready to refute every argument, “and the screens make it just as comfortable as your own home would be.”
“How far is it from anywhere?” demanded Miss Campbell suddenly.
Billie hesitated.
“It’s twenty-five miles, but there is a good road from the railroad station and the ‘Comet’ can take us across in no time. You see, there is a little village in the valley at the foot of our mountain, and in summer a ’bus runs twice a day with passengers and the mail, so the road must be fairly good. Papa says lots of automobiles go over it.”
“Twenty-five miles,” groaned Miss Campbell.
“Twenty-five miles from a telegraph station——”
“But there is no one for you to telegraph to if Papa and I are with you, dear Cousin, is there?” asked Billie ingenuously.
Miss Campbell’s expression softened. Nothing pleased her so much as for Billie to make one family of the three. The young cousin had become such a fixture in her home that she had grown quite jealous of Duncan Campbell’s possessive airs with his daughter.
“One would think she really belonged to him more than to me,” she would exclaim at such times, with some unreasonableness it must be admitted.
But it was plain that the little spinster’s resolutions against camping were beginning to crumble.