[CHAPTER XXIII]
AN UNUSUAL PROPOSAL
“I’m sorry this is our last day in camp, aren’t you, ‘Peter Pan’? We have had such a splendid time and it seems all too short.”
Bess and “Peter Pan,” together with one of the dogs, were left alone in camp while the rest of the party had gone on their last shoot. The little girl was feeling slightly indisposed after the last few strenuous days, so Bess asked to be permitted to stay “at home” with her for the day, as she could not, or rather would not, shoot the chickens; anyway, Mrs. Bland, too, might enjoy one more day with her gun and the birds.
“Yes, I am just dreadfully sorry that we shall have to go home, ’cause then I won’t see you any more, and I feel as if I love you next to my mother,” answered “Peter Pan,” and she put up a pair of puckered lips for a kiss as she hastily swallowed the last bit of her apple pie.
“Really—Miss Bess, do you—do you think that a little girl ought to have only one piece of pie?” she asked, so entreatingly that Bess, injudiciously, she feared, gave her another large, juicy triangle.
Laughingly she said: “There are times, dear, and this is one of them, when I think a little girl may have all the pie she wants.” But before the last crumb had been safely stored away, black lashes were drooping languidly over a pair of deep blue eyes, and a sleepy little girl was carried into the tent where she might sleep and dream of apple pies—p-i-e-s.
Bess sat beside the sleeper with an unopened magazine on her knee.
Just then her eyes rested on one of the air-beds, and immediately she began to wonder why it shouldn’t make a good boat. The more she thought of it the more she determined to try it and see.
Without much trouble she arrayed herself in an improvised bathing suit and removed the canvas cover from the inflated rubber bed. She felt a reluctance in leaving “Peter Pan” alone, but she thought she would be gone only a few moments and would be in full view of the tent all the time.
“Here, Lady!” Calling to the drowsy dog, she placed the animal with the sleeping child.