Miss Leicester looked puzzled.
"You were very good not to say that I was foolish to carry two extra sails."
"I did think it was nonsense, Tom," he was promptly assured, "but then I remembered that you had only hired the boat, and thought perhaps the sails went with it. Of course they take up too much room in the cabin. You can't mean that you are going on a longer voyage?"
"Tents!" shouted Betty, jumping up and dancing about in great excitement. "Tents! don't you see, Aunt Barbara? and we're going to camp out." It was a very anxious moment, for if Aunt Barbara said, "We must go home to-night," there would be nothing to do but obey.
"But your Aunt Mary will be worried, won't she?" asked Miss Leicester, whose quick wit suspected a deep-laid plot. She was already filled with a spirit of adventure; she really looked pleased, but was not without a sense of responsibility.
"I thought you would like it," explained Mr. Leicester, in a matter-of-fact way; "and there was no need of telling you beforehand, so that you would make your will and pay your taxes and get in all the winter supplies and have the minister to tea before you started. Aunt Mary knows, and so does Serena; you will see that Serena contemplated the situation by the way she filled these big baskets."
"I saw that they were amused with something that I didn't quite understand. And Mary Beck's mother will not feel anxious?" she asked, for a final assurance. "I never expected to turn myself into a wild Indian at my age, even to please foolish children like you and Betty, but I have always wished that I could sleep one night under the pine woods."
"You said so when we were reading Mr. Stevenson's 'Travels with a Donkey' aloud to Aunt Mary," Betty stated eagerly, as if the others would find it hard to believe her grandaunt. Somehow, a stranger would have found it difficult to believe that Miss Leicester had unsatisfied desires about gypsying.
Mary Beck was deeply astonished; she had a huge admiration for her dignified neighbor across the way, and yet it was always a little perilous to her ease of mind and self-possession to find herself in Miss Leicester's company. Many a time, in the days before Betty came to Tideshead, she had walked to and fro before the old house hoping to be spoken to or called in for a visit, and yet was too shy to properly answer a kind good-morning when they met. Aunt Barbara used to think that Becky was a dull girl, but they were already better friends. It took a long time to rouse Becky's enthusiasm, but when roused it burned with steady flame. To think that she should be camping out with Miss Leicester!
But Mr. Leicester and Betty and Becky were soon at work making their camp, and the novices took their first lesson in woodcraft. The young men, Harry Foster and Seth, came ashore bringing the tender loaded deep with tents and blankets, some of them from Jonathan's carefully kept chests in the carriage-house, and Miss Leicester wondered again how anybody had contrived to get so many things from the house to the boat without her knowledge. There were two sharp hatchets, and presently Seth and Harry were dispatched to gather some dry wood for the fire, though until near evening the tents need not be put up nor the last arrangements made for sleeping. By and by everybody could help either to cut or carry hemlock and spruce boughs for the beds.