Betty Gordon at Mountain Camp Part 25

"I don't know," said Louise thoughtfully. "Locked up in a box, you really couldn't get into much harm, Betty."

"Sure she could get into trouble," declared Bobby. "Bees could crawl in through the gimlet holes and sting her."

"I'd like to have seen her jumping that fire on horseback," sighed Libbie.

"It must have been wonderful!"

Mr. Gordon looked rather disturbed as he stared at his niece.

"That's exactly what I shouldn't want to see her do," he said. "I do not know what I am going to do if, as she gets older, she grows more energetic," he added to Mr. and Mrs. Canary. "Betty is more than a handful for a poor bachelor uncle, I do believe!"

He forbade any more excursions away from the camp after that unless the excursionists took some adult person with them. He went himself to Candace Farm to see Hunchie Slattery; but he took only Ida Bellethorne with him.

They went on their snowshoes. During this trip Mr. Gordon won the abiding confidence of the girl.

Meanwhile the youthful visitors at Mountain Camp allowed no hour to be idle. There was always something to do, and what one could not think of in the way of fun another could.

Mr. Canary's men had smoothed a coasting course down the hillside to the lake not a quarter of a mile from the Overlook. There was a nest of toboggans in one of the outhouses. Tobogganing afforded the nine young people much sport.

For the others insisted that Ida Bellethorne share in all their good times. She declared she never would get Libbie's blouse done in time; but Libbie said that she could finish it afterward and send it on to Shadyside. Just now the main thing was to crowd as much fun as possible into the remaining days of their vacation.

The young folks from Fairfields were paired off very nicely; but they did not let Ida feel that she was a "fifth wheel," and she really had a good time. These snow-sports were so unfamiliar to her that she enjoyed them the more keenly.

"I do think these boys are so nice," she said to Betty as they climbed the hill from the lakesh.o.r.e, dragging the toboggan behind them by its rope.

"Of course they're nice," said the loyal Betty. "Especially Bob Henderson.

He's just like a brother to me. If he wasn't nice to you I should scold him--that I should, Ida."

"I never can repay you for your kindness," sighed the English girl, quite serious of visage. "And your uncle, too."

Betty flashed her a penetrating look and was on the verge of speaking of something that she, at least, considered of much importance. Then she hesitated. Ida had never mentioned the possibility of Betty's having dropped anything in Mrs. Staples' store. Betty shut her lips tight again and waited. If Ida did know anything about her lost locket, Betty wanted the English girl to speak of it first.

They went in to dress for dinner that afternoon just before a change in the weather. A storm had been threatening for some hours, and flakes of snow began to drift down before they left the slide.

"Let's dress up in our best, girls," Louise said gaily. "Put on our best bibs and tuckers. Make it a gala occasion. Teddy, be sure and scrub behind your ears, naughty boy!"

"I feel as though I ought to be in rompers the way you talk," said the Tucker twin, but he laughed.

The boys ran off to "primp," and what the girls did to make themselves lovely, Libbie said "was a caution!" One after the other they came into Betty's and Bobby's room and pirouetted to show their finery. Ida had been decked out very nicely by her friends, and her outfit did not seem shabby in the least.

But the English girl noted one thing about Betty, and it puzzled her. The other girls from Shadyside School wore their pieces of jewelry while Betty displayed not a single trinket. As the other girls were hurrying out to join the boys and descend to the big hall, Ida held Betty back.

"Where is it, Betty?" she asked. "Don't you wear it at all? Are you afraid of losing it again?"

"What do you mean?" asked Betty, her heart pounding suddenly and her eyes growing brighter. Ida Bellethorne placed her hand upon Betty's chest, looking at her closely as she asked the question:

"Didn't Mrs. Staples give it to you? That beautiful locket, you know.

Aren't you allowed to wear it?"

CHAPTER XXIII

CAN IT BE DONE?

"Dear me!" exclaimed Betty. "How curious you are. I am not allowed to wear my diamond earrings that Doctor and Mrs. Guerin gave me, of course. They are the old-fas.h.i.+oned kind for pierced ears, and would have to be reset, and diamonds are too old for me anyway. But Uncle d.i.c.k lets me wear any thing else I own----"

"That locket," questioned Ida. "That pretty locket. It did fall out of your bag in the shop, didn't it, Betty?"

"My goodness!" stammered Betty, "did you find it?"

"I picked it up," said Ida soberly. "Mrs. Staples would not let me run after you with it. But she promised to give it to you when you came and asked for it."

"She did? She never----"

Then Betty hesitated a moment. She remembered clearly just what had been said in the little neighborhood shop when she and Bobby had called there to get Bobby's blue over-blouse.

"It's a fact, I never asked her for it," she said slowly. "No, I never. I just asked her if she had found anything, and she said 'No.'"

"She would! That would be like her!" cried Ida Bellethorne. "She is a person who prides herself upon being exactly honest; and I guess that means barely honest. Oh, Betty Gordon!"

"Well, now what's the matter?" asked Betty.

"Did--did you know you lost it in Mrs. Staples' shop?"

"No. I didn't know where I lost it. I only thought----"

"That I might have picked it up and said nothing about it?" demanded Ida Bellethorne.

"Why Ida! I would not have hurt your feelings by saying anything about it for the world," said Betty honestly. "That was why I didn't tell you. You see, if you really had known nothing about the locket when I asked you, all the time you would be afraid that I suspected you. Isn't that so?"

"You dear, good girl!" gasped Ida, dabbling her eyes with her handkerchief. "And I didn't say anything because I thought you would think I wanted a reward for returning it."

"So, you see, I couldn't speak of it. But now, of course, we'll get it away from Mrs. Staples. I think she's horrid mean!"

Betty expressed her opinion of the shopwoman vigorously, but she put her arms around the English girl at the same time and kissed her warmly.

"You're a dear!" repeated Ida.

"You're another!" cried Betty gaily. "Now come on! Maybe those boys will eat up all the dinner, and I am so hungry!"

One of the men arrived from Cliffdale during dinner with the mail and the information that another cold rain was falling and freezing to everything it touched.

"The whole country about here will be one glare of ice in the morning,"

said Mr. Canary. "You young folks will have all the sledding you care for, I fancy. I have seen the time when, after one of these ice storms, one might coast from here to Midway Junction on the railroad, and that's a matter of twenty miles."

"What a lark that would be," cried Tommy Tucker. "Some slide, eh, Bob?"