"You are big enough, that's sure," admitted Dorothy, giving him a look of unstinted admiration, "and as to being stunning—I just imagine that you are even that—in your golf suit."
"There now!" and Nat went off into kinks; "he has to wear knickers to look cute. You ought to see me in my football togs if you want to behold something really magnificent."
"Here, here!" called out Major Dale. "When I was a lad it was considered a crime to keep a mirror in one's room. We used to keep one blind shut to get a reflection on the window pane for the neck-tie business, and we took a chance at the hair-part. But to hear you young ones! What you actually need, boys, is a little of the real thing in training. Why don't you pitch a tent out on your own river here, and go in for roughing it?"
"Great!" declared the boys' chorus.
"Now that's something like," continued Nat, "and it would do a lot toward patching up a fellow's finances. Let's see. Where's that itinerary? Suppose we make it two weeks at home—on the co-operative."
Like the proverbial wildfire, the suggestion spread, until within a short hour the boys, with Dorothy, were out on the river edge, selecting the spot upon which to pitch the "War Tent"—for war they declared it would be, "against masculine beauties." Dorothy found herself so busy planning the boys suits, figuring out what they would require in the way of supplies and furniture, though this last was to be cut down to mere necessities, that she almost felt her own camping days had begun, as Nat expressed it.
"Now that comes of having a girl around," declared Ned. "If you had not come, Dorothy, we would never have had that admiration conference, and then we could never have discovered our own beautiful river, for in this case, I don't mind using a correct, and all right adjective, although usually I consider anything adjectivey rather too much of a spread."
He sauntered once more to the river's brink, where a short distance down stream could be seen the Lebanon, the family rowboat. Surely the place did warrant the boy extravagant use of "a correct adjective," and did look "adjectivey" away into the superlative.
Nat found just the spot for the tent, Roger and Joe were racing about like little human greyhounds, intent upon the scent of fun, and Dorothy took time to decide that perhaps this camp would prove as delightful as she expected that one to be, whither, in a few days, she must journey, and leave the dear home-folks, reluctantly, indeed. But then boys' fun always seemed like their idea of Fourth of July—just as noisy and just as unreliable. At the same time they always managed to put it off with a roar, and this roar had already set in for the Blanket Indians of "Cut-it-out-Camp."
Dorothy had promised her Aunt Winnie not to stay too long away from her, as there were so many things to be discussed before the aunt and her favorite niece should part for the summer. So that, now, Dorothy was hurrying to finish up her part of the camp map, and go back to the Cedars.