The Motor Maids at Sunrise Camp Part 18

In the meantime, the waiters who had waited in vain and the wanderers who had wandered fruitlessly, began to realize that the situation was serious. Billie grew desperately impatient. At last she succeeded in engaging a carry-all and two horses from a man at the moat house and soon she and Nancy, seated face to face, were hurrying along the road.

Dr. Hume had met Percy. Ben had discovered Elinor and Mary standing fearfully on the edge of the forest. By the time that Richard Hook had got anywhere at all with his old nag, the lake-party, with the exception of Miss Campbell, was re-united in Billie's carry-all and driving comfortably in the direction of the "Comet."

They were very tired and hungry but a graven image would have melted to laughter over this comedy of errors, and Richard Hook, hearing the gay chorus of voices approaching, was quite sure it was another picnic party. But he was not a young man to take chances, and having taken his position across the middle of the road, he waved his arms and yelled, "Stop!"

"Do you know anything about a little lady in gray and an abandoned automobile?" he asked.

"Cousin Helen and the 'Comet,'" cried Billie, consumed with anxiety.

"Oh, Ben, how could you have left them?"

"But----" began Ben.

"I a.s.sure you the lady is in good hands," interrupted Richard. "My sister is looking after her."

There were more explanations and presently they started on their way again, and in a little while drew up beside the Gypsy van and the abandoned motor car. And the upshot of the whole adventure was that the two parties joined forces and provisions.

The boys built a fire against a great boulder on the river bank and there was a wonderful supper. All the very best of everything was brought out for the occasion. They ate Johnnie cakes from wooden platters and drank black coffee from gla.s.ses, Russian fas.h.i.+on. Later they sang songs and told stories around the camp fire. Never did people commingle so agreeably as the caravanners and the motorists. Somehow Sunrise Camp and Alberdina Schoenbachler faded into the dim recesses of their memories.

"Of course you can't go home," Richard Hook remarked to Billie. "We'll camp out to-night. You'll never be able to mend that car in all this blackness, and it would be a pretty hard road to follow at night anyhow.

We've just come over it. Dobbin can pull the car over to one side of the road, and Miss Campbell and Miss Price can sleep in the van."

"And we'll show you what a bed really is," Ben went on eagerly. "Not a motor car cus.h.i.+on affair either."

To their surprise, Miss Campbell was agreeable to the plan.

"There's n.o.body at home to worry but Alberdina," she said, "and it won't hurt her to lose a little flesh, anyhow."

The boys worked hard over the beds. Springy couches they made of spruce branches, covered with blankets, and, at last as care-free as a lot of Gypsies, they all slept as soundly as they had ever slept in their own beds at home.

CHAPTER XII.

THE RETURN.

With the exception of her three best friends, Billie Campbell had never met people who pleased her so much on short acquaintance as the Hooks and their guest. It had not taken them half an hour to bridge over the gap of unfamiliarity.

"What is it?" she asked of Maggie Hook, Richard's small, whimsical sister, black haired, black eyed, with quick alert movements like a bird's.

"I can tell you exactly the reason," replied Maggie. "It's because we all belong to the road. There is a bond between us. We go Gypsying in our van and you go Gypsying in your car. We be all of one blood like Kipling's Mowgli and the animals in the jungle."

"Only we aren't the real thing as much as you," said Billie modestly.

"The 'Comet' is a dear old thing, but he's not a house."

"You wouldn't enjoy it if he were," said Maggie. "A motor traveling van would never do. You see the point of this kind of life is that it's lazy and contemplative. We just amble along and it doesn't matter whether we make ten miles or five. We are not attempting long distance records. We are just getting intimate with the ups and downs of the country; the streams and rivers; the little valleys and bits of green by the roadside. Sometimes, if we find a place that's secluded enough, a little glen or a grove that screens off the road, we stay there for several days."

"But what do you do?"

"We all do the things we like best. Richard reads and takes long walks or fishes, if there is a stream. I clean the van from top to bottom and polish everything up and bake a cake in the little oven. Then I darn all the stockings and mend the clothes."

Billie laughed.

"You're not a Gypsy," she said, "if you are a black-eyed wanderer. They never mend or clean anything. But what does Miss Swinnerton like to do?

Is she fond of housework, too?"

"Amy? No, not specially. She sketches and paints in water colors, and botanizes, and looks for bits of stones and rocks which she examines through a gla.s.s, and translates French and generally potters around.

She's always busy. She can do anything from making an omelette to painting a picture."

Billie turned her eyes half wistfully toward the plump brown-haired Amy Swinnerton. She felt suddenly very inefficient and worthless.

"I can't do anything," she said, frowning. "I'm ashamed of myself."

"You can run a motor car and keep it in order," answered the new friend.

"I never knew another girl who could."

"That's ground into me by experience. But I hate sewing. I'm not a good cook and I can't draw or paint or play the piano. We met a girl this summer who has been brought up in a cabin on the mountain and has never been to school in her life, who knows a lot more than I do."

Billie told what little she knew of the strange history of Phoebe.

"It would make a wonderful story," observed Maggie. "I should like to put it into a book."

"Do you write, too?" asked Billie eagerly.

Maggie blinked her dark, bright eyes.

"When you see my name appear in book reviews and magazines and things, then you'll know I write," she replied.

This conversation occurred the next morning at breakfast. Billie had risen at dawn and repaired the "Comet" and the motor party was soon now to start on its homeward journey.

Richard Hook presently joined his sister and Billie. Sitting cross-legged on the ground at their feet, he munched a bacon sandwich and sipped black coffee from a tin cup. He reminded Billie of one of Shakespeare's wise fools. All he lacked were the cap and bells. His whimsical, humorous eyes were rather far apart; his dark hair, cropped close, stood up straight over his forehead. His nose was distinguished in shape and his flexible mouth turned up at the corners. He talked slowly with a sort of tw.a.n.g like a farmer from the east coast and there was a kind of hidden humor under whatever he said. He had charming old-world manners, and an old-fas.h.i.+oned way of saying "I thank you," or "Permit me, ma'am," or "At your service, ma'am." He was really quite a delightful person, they unanimously decided; and so was his sister and so was her friend.

Billie wondered what Richard Hook's work was; or whether perhaps he was still in college. She wondered a great many things about him, and she felt quite sure that he was not well off. Presently she said:

"It's too bad when we are all just beginning to be friends that we must part so soon. Why can't you turn old Dobbin right about face and come back and see us at Camp Sunrise?"

"Why not, indeed?" answered Richard.

"Do come," urged Billie, never dreaming that in giving this invitation she had been moved by something stronger than her own friendly wish to know more of these nice people, and that destiny itself had a hand in the business.

Richard Hook took a little calendar from his pocket and contemplated it gravely.

"Another month has perished with her moon," he remarked. "We're in August, little sister. Did you realize that? I see no reason why we shouldn't travel toward Sunrise Camp before----"

"Before----" repeated Maggie, and the brother and sister exchanged a swift glance.

"Then you do accept," exclaimed Billie joyfully.