“There’s no deciding to be done about that—it’s settled,” returned Betty, adding, gayly: “How do you like our tent, Will? Isn’t it a masterpiece?”
“Masterpiece is right,” Will returned, admiringly. “It’s about as thorough a piece of work as I’ve seen. How about it, Frank?”
“Fine,” returned Frank, as he walked about the makeshift tent, examining it. “All to the good, girls. Did you say it was rain-tight, too?” he asked of Mollie, who laughed grimly.
“I guess we ought to know,” she said. “We sat for hours playing checkers with the rain pattering on top of it.”
“Raining, raining everywhere, and not a drop on us,” said Grace, adding, as they laughed: “Mighty lucky for us, too, that we didn’t get wet. All we needed was a soaking to make our contentment complete.”
“You poor children,” said Betty, commiseratingly. “You must have had one awful time.”
“So much so that we’d rather think of something else,” said Grace, adding, as she turned to her brother: “How about the tent you brought, Will? Aren’t you going to put it up for us?”
“It’s for that express purpose that we came,” Will returned as he led the way back to the Gem. “Might as well get the business part of our mission over with first and then we can enjoy ourselves.”
So they went to work, and it was not long before they had the new tent up, as snug and pretty a tent as any one would wish to see. It even had a window in one side of it, a window whose canvas flap could be pulled up or let down from the inside by means of a convenient cord.
The boys would not let the girls take down the makeshift tent of tarpaulin, saying that it would serve as an excellent shelter for them, the boys, for this one night in camp. And since they had brought along another piece of tarpaulin to cover the Gem in case of bad weather, there was no reason why they should not leave the original tent standing.