“Well, can the boys get away earlier if we do? It won’t be any fun going there alone, particularly if there’s a mystery about the place.”
“I didn’t say there was any mystery about the place,” corrected Cora. “Though there may be. Besides, we’re to have a chaperon, you know. Or at least the caretaker and his wife live in Camp Surprise, and I presume she will be a chaperon.”
“But it won’t be half the fun if the boys don’t come along,” declared Belle. “They are so jolly, and—er—well, you know what I mean,” she finished a bit lamely.
“No need to explain at all,” said Cora cheerfully. “It’s perfectly all right. If I go, that means mother can close the house so much earlier. Jack won’t stay there alone, I know, so he’s likely to tag along.”
“And if Jack goes Walter will. I guess we can count of making an earlier start on our vacation than we contemplated,” said Bess. “It will be lovely.”
“Yes,” Cora assented.
“There’s the tea room,” added Belle a little later as the car came out on a long, level stretch of road. “It’s a perfect dear of a place; isn’t it?”
“A regular gazelle,” agreed Cora mockingly.
She swung her machine into the parking place provided, and a few minutes afterward the three girls were sitting at one of the wicker tables, in wicker chairs, near a window which opened on a vine-shaded porch, while electric fans hummed and droned breezily and refreshingly behind them and in front of them stood rose-tinted plates heaped high with pale yellow cream, nestled alongside of which were delicately browned macaroons.
“Oh, what a symphony of color!” murmured Cora, as the white-capped, colored waitress set the refreshments from off her mahogany-cretonne tray.