“Did you find your clothes?” Louise asked Marie rather superfluously, for she had on her sailor-suit, rather fresher-looking than it had been before.
“It was all done when we got there,” said Marie, “but Edith’s dress was harder to do—all those ruffles, you know—so Mary’s still ironing it.”
“Then we’d better sit here and wait for her,” suggested Louise. “And oh, girls, we have a plan.”
“A real plan, all hand-made?” mocked Helen. “Do tell us about it.”
So then the camping-trip was discussed and votes taken about it. Helen, of course, could go. Marie was sure she would be allowed to.
“Mother says I stay in the house and read too much anyway,” she said.
The other girls, drifting up one by one, were all wild over the idea. Edith, in her freshly-laundered frock, was a little doubtful about the hike, but as she said, if she fainted from exhaustion she could take a train or a carriage or something the rest of the way.
They talked camping till it was time to go back and pack up things for the return trip. So the girls rose up from around the apple-tree, and stowed everything away in the baskets and satchels they had brought, and walked back to the trolley. First, though, they gave old Mary all the provisions they had left; cocoa, six rolls, and a generous half of the chocolate cake.
“That certainly was a life-sized cake!” breathed Winnie as she set it on Mary’s kitchen table. “But it won’t be as hard to eat as it was to carry, will it?”
“Sure ye needn’t worry but what it’ll get et,” laughed Mary. “Many thanks, an’ good luck to yez all.”