Mary seated herself at the Townsend tea-table one evening with nervous dread; for, next to Mrs. Prim, Mrs. Townsend inspired her with more awe than any other lady in town. When she thought it time for Fanny to speak, she touched her foot under the table, and Fanny began.
“Papa, I have something to say.”
Fanny had the feeling that she was not highly reverenced by her family, on account of her unfortunate habit of giggling; but her face was serious enough now. “Papa, may we girls go down to the farm next summer,—to that house with the roses ’round it,—and camp out? The girls all want to, and we—we’re going to call it Camp Comfort.” (The reader will perceive that this explains the letters “C. C.”) She was sorry next moment that she had spoken, for her mother said, just as she had feared she might, “What will you think of next, Fanny?”
But her father seemed only amused. “Camp out? We girls? How many may ye be? And who? Going to take your servants?”
“You’ll each need a watch-dog,” suggested Fanny’s elder brother, Jack.
“You’ll come home nights, I presume,—servants, watch-dogs and all,” said her father.
“O no, indeed! It wouldn’t be camping out if we came home nights! And nobody has a dog but Fanny, and we shouldn’t want any servants,” cried Mary Gray, whose views of labor seemed to have changed materially.
“We intend to do our own work,” remarked Fanny. Whereupon everybody laughed; and General Townsend asked again who the girls were? “Oh, Flaxie Frizzle and Blanche Jones and I, papa; that makes three, rather young; and then Sadie Patten and Lucy Abbott, they’re rather old; that makes five. Sadie and Lucy will be the mothers,—I mean if you let us go.”
“That ‘if’ is well put in,” said brother Jack.
“But what will you do for a stove?” asked General Townsend, wishing to hear their plans, “there’s none in the house.”