“No, you don’t,” retorted Grace. “This place is bad but it might be worse.”
A chuckle in the darkness. Then the sound of a tremendous yawn.
“Oh,” said Amy, “I wish you’d stop talking and let me go to sleep. I’m nearly dead.”
And then there was silence while the girls, despite their uncomfortable beds, slept heavily. Outside the tent the fire sputtered sleepily while in the distance a night owl sent its mournful cry echoing through the still woods. After a while the moon, fighting its way through the film of clouds, flung its soft radiance down through the trees, filling the woods with silvery magic. And still the girls slept on.
When they awakened moonlight had fled before the merciless onslaught of the sun. Where the fire had been the night before were a few smoldering ashes, for no one had wakened to attend to it.
Having scrambled from the discomfort of their beds out into the brilliant sunshine, the girls regarded the spot where the fire had been with considerable amazement.
“Well, who would have thought we’d sleep like that?” said Mollie, rubbing a bruised shin which had reposed in too close proximity to a sharp stone during the night. “We might have been visited by any number of wild animals and tramps and we’d never have known it.”
“What we don’t know will never hurt us,” said Grace sententiously. “I only hope the Gem’s all right.”
But Betty had already seen to that and, coming back at that precise minute, announced that the motor boat was “feeling fine.”
“And now for breakfast,” she said, briskly. “We’ve got a lot to do to-day and we can’t afford to lose any time.”