“Why! I think that is real liberal,” declared Jess, with some warmth.
Liz eyed her again coldly. “You must ha’ worked awful cheap in your life,” she said.
“I know,” Laura explained, quietly, laying an admonitory hand upon her chum’s arm, “You know, that is what you will receive each week.”
“What’s that?” demanded Liz, with a jump, “Say that again, will ye?”
“We will pay you that sum weekly,” repeated Laura.
“Say – say it by the month!” gasped the lean girl, her eyes showing more surprise than Laura had thought them capable of betraying.
Laura did as she was requested. A slow, faint grin dawned on Liz Bean’s narrow countenance.
“I been useter gittin’ paid by the month – and sometimes not then. Some ladies has paid me so little for helpin’ them that I wisht they’d paid me only every three months, so’s ’twould sound bigger!
“I gotter take ye up before somebody pinches me.”
“Pinches you? What do you mean?” asked Jess, doubtfully.
“I don’t want to wake up,” declared Liz. “I never got so much money since I was turned adrift when my a’nt died. Don’t you wake up, neither, and forgit to pay me!”
“I promise not to do that,” laughed Laura. “Then you’ll come with us?”
“If I don’t break an arm,” declared Lizzie Bean, with emphasis.
They told her how to meet them at the dock, and the hour they expected to start. “And bring your oldest clothes,” warned Jess.
“What’s that?” demanded Liz.
“We just about live in old clothes – or in a bathing suit – in camp,” explained Laura.
“Bless your heart!” exclaimed Liz. “I ain’t never had nothin’ but old clo’es. Been wearin’ hand-me-downs ever since I can remember.”
“My goodness gracious!” said Jess, and she and Laura hurried off for school. “Did you ever see such an uncouth creature? I don’t wonder Billy Long says she’s cracked.”
“I don’t know about her being cracked, as you call it,” laughed Laura. “Just because she’s queer is no proof that she is an imbecile. You know the old parody on ‘Lives of Great Men All Remind Us,’ don’t you?” and she went on to quote:
“‘Lives of imbeciles remind us
It may some day come to pass,
We shall see one staring at us
From our trusty looking-glass!’”
“Shucks!” responded Jess. “You’ll get to be as bad as Bobby Hargrew with those old wheezes. But, did you ever see such a girl before?”
“No,” admitted Laura. “I honestly never did. But I am quite sure she is in the possession of all her senses–”
“She may be; but I bet her senses are not like other folks’,” chuckled Jess.
“She surely won’t bite, Jess,” responded Laura, smiling.
“Hope not! ‘Boil water without burning it!’ What do you know about that?”
“I think it’s funny,” said Laura.
“Well! I only hope we get something to eat in camp,” murmured Jess.
“We can’t expect her to do all the cooking,” Laura said. “And I shall tell the girls so.”
“Goodness! I don’t know whether I want to go camping with this bunch, after all,” said Jess. “What some of them will do to the victuals they have to cook will be a shame!”
However, the prospect of indifferent cookery made none of the girls of Central High less enthusiastic in the matter of the preparations for camping out on Acorn Island, in the middle of Lake Dunkirk.
They were all as busy as bees the next day, packing their bags and flying about from house to house, asking each other: “What you going to take?”
“Goodness me!” cried Laura, at last; “it isn’t what do we want, but how little can we get along with! Discard everything possible, girls – do!”
Bobby Hargrew declared Lil Pendleton had started to pack a Saratoga trunk, and that she had been obliged to point out to Lil that neither of the motorboats was large enough to ship such a piece of baggage.
Their gymnasium suits would be just the thing in camp. And of course they all had bathing suits. Otherwise most of the girls got their apparel down to what Jess Morse called “an insignificant minority.”
“If the King of India, or the Duke and Duchess of Doosenberry, comes calling at our camp, we shall have to put up a scarlet fever sign and all go to bed,” said Bobby. “We’ll have nothing to receive them in.”
“But not Purt Sweet,” chuckled Billy Long. “Purt’s packed a dinner jacket and a pair of spats. How much other fancy raiment he proposes to spring on us the deponent knoweth not. He’ll be just a scream in the woods.”
“He asked me if there were many dangerous characters lurking in the woods around Lake Dunkirk,” chuckled Lance. “Somebody has been stringing him about outlaws.”
“Short and Long looks guilty,” said Chet, suspiciously. “What you been stuffin’ Purt with, Billy?”
Billy Long, who straddled the piazza rail, swinging his feet, showed his teeth in a broad smile. “You read about that Halliday fellow, didn’t you?” he asked.
“Oh! the chap they say stole the money from that Albany bank?” responded Lance.
“It was securities he stole – and forged people’s names to them so as to get money,” said Laura. “The Lockwood girls’ Aunt Dora lost some money by him.”
“That is – if he did it,” said Chet, doubtfully.
“Well, the newspapers say so,” Jess observed.
“What if they do?” demanded Billy, belligerently. “They all said I helped burglarize that department store last summer – didn’t they? And I never did it at all.”
“No. It was another monkey,” chuckled Lance.
The others laughed, for Billy Long had gotten them into serious trouble on the occasion mentioned, and it was long enough in the past now to seem amusing. But Chet added:
“It’s a wonder to me that Norman Halliday had a chance to get hold of all those securities and forge people’s names to them. And he knew just which papers to take. Looks fishy.”
“Well, he ran away, anyhow,” Lance said.
“So did Billy,” Bobby said. “And for the same reason, perhaps. He was scared.”
“My father says,” Chet pursued, “he has his doubts about Halliday’s guilt. He believes he is a catspaw for somebody else.”
“Anyhow,” said Billy, “the papers say he’s gone into the Big Woods south of Lake Dunkirk. And Purt wants to carry a gun to defend himself from outlaws.”
“If he does,” Chet said, seriously, “I’ll see that there are no cartridges in the gun. Huh! I wouldn’t trust Purt Sweet with a pop-gun.”
Bobby, meanwhile, was saying to Laura: “I wonder why Old Dimple was interested enough in that Albany bank robbery to carry around that clipping out of the paper?”
“Maybe he lost money, too,” Laura suggested.
“What’s that about the old Prof?” put in Chet. “Do you know he’s gone out of town already?”
“No!” was the chorus in reply.
“Fact.