Pour in they did, six more than the girls had prepared for; but Lewis and Bill with their ready inventions made beds for the boys of spruce boughs, and immediately put in an order for more cots and an extra tent.
There were two careful mammas who had come along to look after their daughters and an old bachelor who had a niece in tow; so Cousin Lizzie made up her table of bridge and every one was happy, especially the daughters of the careful mammas and the niece who was in tow. If one must be chaperoned, it is certainly pleasant to have the chaperone interested in something besides chaperoning.
The Mountain Goat made three round trips to the station to meet passengers on the afternoon train on that first Friday, and other enthusiastic campers walked up the mountain. Josephus was very busy with a cart full of bags and bundles. One of the stipulations that the girls had made in their advertisements was that every one must bring his or her own blankets. This was at the instigation of Dr. Wright, who said it would be very difficult to furnish blankets enough; and also for sanitary reasons he knew it to be wise. Sheets are easy to have washed, but blankets are not so simple a proposition.
The twenty week-enders were all young with the exception of the two careful mammas, the old bachelor with the niece in tow, and two stiff-backed spinsters who must have had some good reason of their own for coming to camp in the mountains but they did not give it. They looked very grim and uncompromising as they sat on the back seat of the Goat with a plump and pleasing little stenographer, who was to take her much-needed holiday at the camp, wedged in between them.
“They must be geologists,” whispered Douglas to Lewis. Douglas and Lucy had gone to the station to meet the newcomers, while Helen and Nan were to receive them at camp. “One of them had a little hammer sticking out of her pocket.”
“Well, let’s hope they will keep their hammers for rocks and not knock the camp with them.”
“Do you know, I did an awfully foolish thing? I put Tillie Wingo on the front seat with Bill and forgot to introduce them. Helen would never have done such a tactless thing.”
“Well, a small thing like an introduction here or there won’t stop Tillie. I bet she talks poor Bill blue in the face,” laughed Lewis.
So she did. Miss Hill, the pleasant stenographer, told Helen that not for one moment did Tillie stop talking on that zig-zag ride up the mountain. She poured forth a stream of delightful high-pitched nothings into Bill’s crimson ear. Bill, as was his habit, said nothing, and, like the tar baby, kept on saying nothing. She had his ear; his eye must perforce remain on the perilous road; his tongue was his to hold, and he held it. Once he let forth a great laugh which had the effect of shutting Tillie up for almost thirty seconds; but it was not time to go to sleep yet and Tillie was accustomed to talk until she went to sleep and sometimes even afterwards.
“A week-end camp is a most original idea and every one in Richmond is simply wild about it. You see, the Carters are very popular and if they decide to do something, lots of people will want to be doing it, too. Helen Carter is considered the best dressed girl in Richmond, not that she dresses more than any of the other girls but she has such good taste. All of us girls are wild about her clothes. I adore camping! I’d join the Camp-Fire but somehow khaki is not becoming to me. Do you know, I do not think that muddy tan is becoming to decided blondes—not that I am such a very decided blonde. I know lots of girls who wear it who are not near so highly colored as I am—but somehow I think tan takes all the life out of a blonde. Of course, one can wear white up close to the face, but even then the tan kind of ruins a blonde complexion. I prefer blue and pink and lavender and green and, of course, yellow, and I think grey is just sweet for a blonde. I am wild for a black dress but my mother is so old-fashioned she thinks no one under thirty should wear black unless, of course, there happens to be a death in the family. Under those circumstances, I fancy she would let me wear black. I would not wear heavy mourning but just some diaphanous, gauzy thing with tulle—although I do think that organdy collars and cuffs set one off terrifically well. I think I would make a splendid widow—don’t you?”