Dick Porter, the night-watchman on the grounds around Tamarack Hills, rubbed his eyes and heaved the sigh of another task completed. Then he took a last look at Camp Comalong, for the Scouts had already stored in the tent goods of value, straightened his shoulders to suit the daytime needs, and sauntered off for his breakfast at the Nipanneck.
Quickly as he turned away from the camp grounds a girl stole down from the highest hilltop. Peg, the mysterious, without hat and in simple skirt and blouse, frightened away the chipmunks and bunnies as she skipped, light as a fawn, over the path invisible to less familiar eyes, then she too stopped in front of that dignified flagpole. She looked up and down the length of it and brushed her hand quizzically over its smooth surface.
“Humph!” she jerked. “Going to have everything first class, I guess.”
Cautiously she stepped up to the rustic “sideboard.” This brought from her lips no caustic comment, but at once claimed her wrapt attention. She touched the burlap curtain and peeked under it. She gingerly fingered the rustic basket that held a bunch of wild flowers and hid the glass jar of water, she smiled real approval at the wood’s fern in the rugged nail-keg that offset the center, and a little sigh escaped Peg as she turned to the tent.
The new wood floor was fragrant as the pines, and as it was raised to make it safe from dampness the two “carpentered” steps with the doormat at top seemed very inviting indeed.
The girl ventured under the canvas and stood as if spellbound.
“Scouts!” she was thinking. “And I was the only Scout here till they came with all this.”
The cots were still covered with burlap, and the little foot rugs were rolled in a bundle with some of Cleo’s precious cretonnes. Peg just touched all this with her brown fingers, and in a girl’s way smiled at this or frowned at that, as the fancy struck her.
A shrill whistle from the first lake steamer startled Peg as if she had been detected in her stolen inspection, and poking her head out of the tent to make sure the coast was clear, she jumped down the two white steps and made for the path, safe and unseen even by the girls from Camp Norm, who were just starting out for their nature hike. Peg quickly lost herself in the elderbrush lane that wound through the woods leading up to her own bungalow.
A big shaggy collie ran out to meet her. She patted him fondly and he “wagged her” along to the door, where a woman stood waiting. She was related to the girl, that was obvious, for she had the same high toss to her head, and the same snapping black eyes, also the pure white hair showed the original color must have been black to have changed to white so early.