Wyn's Camping Days: or, The Outing of the Go-Ahead Club

“Oh–ow–ouch!” yawned Percy, and then jumped quickly through the opening of the tent because Grace Hedges pushed her.

“Why! the sun’s up!” cried the big girl. “Why! and there’s Wyn with milk–and eggs–and pretty red radishes–and peas. Mercy me! Look at all the things in this basket. Whose garden have you been robbing, Wyn?”

“Come on!” commanded the captain of the Go-Ahead Club. “I brought a bag of meal in my canoe. And there is salt, and aluminum bowls, and spoons. We can make a good breakfast of eggs and mush. Hurry up, all you lazy folk, and help get breakfast.”

“O-o-o! isn’t the grass cold!” exclaimed one girl who had just stepped out from between woolen blankets.

“I–I feel as though I were dressing outdoors,” gasped another, with chattering teeth. “D-don’t you suppose anybody can see through this tent?”

“Nonsense, goosey!” ejaculated Frank. “Hurry up and get into your clothes. You take up more room than an elephant.”

“Did you ever share a dressing room with an elephant, Frank?” demanded Bess.

“Not before,” returned the thin girl, grimly. “But I am preparing for that experience when I try to dress in the same tent with Gracie.”

But they were all eager to get outside when they sniffed the smoke of the campfire, and, a little later, the odor of eggs “frying in the pan.” Despite the saturated condition of most of the underbrush Wyn knew where to get dry wood for fuel, Dave had long ago taught her that bit of woodcraft.

With a small camp hatchet she had attacked the under branches of the spruce and low pine trees, and soon had a good heap of these dead sticks near the tent. She turned over a flat stone that lay near by for a hearth. Before the other girls and Mrs. Havel were dressed and had washed their faces at the lakeside, Captain Wyn was stirring mush in a kettle and frying eggs in pork fat in a big aluminum pan.

“Sunny side up; or with a veil of brown drawn over their beautiful faces, Frankie?” asked Wyn, referring to the sizzling eggs. “How do you like ’em?”

“I like ’em on toast–‘Adam and Eve on a raft’ Brother Ed calls ’em. And when he wants ’em scrambled he says, ‘Wreck ’em!’”

“You’ll get no toast this morning,” declared Wyn. “You’ll be satisfied with crackers–or go without.”

“Cruel lady!” quoth Frank. “I expect I’ll have to accept my yoke of eggs – ”

“Only the yolk of the eggs, Frank?”

“No, I mean the pair I want,” laughed Frankie. “And I’ll take ’em without the toast and–‘sunny side up.’”

“Good! I can’t turn an egg without breaking it–never could. Now, girls! bring your plates. I’ll flop a pair of eggs onto each plate. There’s crackers in the box. Hand around your bowls. The cornmeal mush is nice, and there is lovely milk and sugar if you want it. For ‘them that likes’ there is coffee.”

“M-m-m! Doesn’t it smell good?” cried Grace, as the party came trooping to the fire with their kits.

“I–I thought I’d miss the sweet butter,” said Bess, sitting down cross-legged on the already dry grass. “But somehow I’ve got such an appetite.”

“I hope the boys are having as good a time,” sighed Wyn, sitting back upon her heels and spooning up her mush, flooded with the new milk. “Isn’t this just scrumptious, Mrs. Havel?”

“It is the simple life,” replied that lady, smiling. “Plenty of fresh air, no frills, plain food–that ought to do much for you girls this summer. I am sure if you can endure plain food and simple living for these several weeks before us, you will all be improved in both health and mind.”

CHAPTER IX

JOHN JARLEY, EXILE

This could be no day of leisure for the Go-Ahead Club. To get settled in camp was the first task–and that no small one.

There was the plank flooring to be laid in the big tent, the cook-tent to be erected, and the floor laid in that. There was a sheet-iron stove to erect, with a smoke pipe to the outside, and an asbestos “blanket” to wrap around the pipe to keep the canvas of the tent-top from scorching.

There were the swinging shelves to put up, fastened to the ridge-pole of the cook-tent, on which certain supplies could be kept out of the reach of the wood mice and other small vermin. Indeed, there were a dozen and one things of moment to see about, beside bringing over to the camp a selection of the stores–and their extra clothes–from John Jarley’s shack by the boat landing.

Wyn was a competent girl and knew something about using a hammer and a saw. The flooring planks for both tents had been assembled at Denton, and were numbered; but after they got the sleepers laid Wyn realized that she and her mates had tackled more of a task than they had expected.

“And the boys will be just as busy as they can be to-day,” she said to the other girls. “It’s a wonder if everything they owned didn’t get soaked last evening.

“Now, we can’t depend upon the Busters to give us any assistance just now. Doubt if we see ‘hide nor hair’ of them to-day. But we need somebody to make these floors properly. There! Bess has stuck a splinter into her hand already.”

“Plague take the old board!” snapped Bess, dropping it and sucking on a ragged little wound in her hand.

“You see,” Wyn said, quickly. “I’m going to get some help. Anybody want to walk over to Jarley’s with me?”

“Are you going to get that man to come here?” demanded Bess, sharply.

“Don’t see what else there is to do–do you, Bessie?”

“Isn’t there anybody else to help us around here? There must be other squatters.”

“I do not know of any. We chance to know the Jarleys – ”

“Not I!” cried Bess, shaking her head. “I don’t know them–and I won’t know them.”

“All right. You and Grace and Percy take the pails and try for some berries in the woods yonder. I saw some ripe ones this morning. Fresh picked berries will add nicely to our bill-of-fare; isn’t that so, Mrs. Havel?”

“Quite so, my dear,” replied the widow, and buried herself in her book again, for, as she had told the girls, she had not come here to work; they must treat her as a guest.

“Are you going to stop with Mrs. Havel, Mina?” continued Wyn. “Then come along with me, Frank. We’ll go over and see if the Jarleys bite. Bess is afraid they will!”

“She was telling us all about John Jarley,” said Wyn’s chum, as the two left the camp on the green knoll. “Do you suppose he stole that motor boat and the box of silver statuettes?”

“I don’t know anything about it,” said Wyn, briskly. “But I know that he and Polly are very poor, and with a motor boat and five thousand dollars’ worth of silver, it looks to me as though they would be very foolish to suffer the privations they do. It’s nasty gossip, that’s all it is.”

“Well, Bess says the man stole from her father years ago – ”

“I don’t know much about that, either,” interrupted Wynifred. “But I think Bess is overstepping the line of exact truth when she says John Jarley stole from her father. They were doing business together, and Mr. Lavine accused Jarley of ‘selling him out’ in a real estate deal.

“I asked my father about it. Father says the whole business was a little misty, at best. If Jarley did all Lavine said, he merely was guilty of being false to his friend and partner. It is doubtful if he made much out of it. But Lavine talked loudly and long; he had lots of friends even then. The talk and all fairly hounded the Jarleys out of town.

“And now,” said Wyn, warmly, “the Lavines are rich and the Jarleys have always been poor. Mr. Jarley is an exile from his old home and such friends as he had in Denton. It is really a shame, I think–and you’ll say so, too, when you see what a splendid girl Polly is.”

The two girls had followed the edge of the lake toward the landing, instead of taking the path through the wood. Suddenly they came in sight of the float and shack, with the several boats in Mr. Jarley’s keeping.

Back from the shore was a tiny cottage, painted red, its window sash and door striped with yellow. It was a gay little cot, and everything about it was as neat and as gaily painted as a Dutch picture.

As Wyn and Frank came down the hill they saw Polly Jarley run out of the house and down to the landing. Her father was busy there at an overturned boat–evidently caulking the seams.

The boatman’s girl did not see her visitors coming; but Wyn and Frank got a good view of her, and the latter exclaimed to Wyn:

“Why! she’s as pretty as a picture! She’s handsome! If she only had on nice clothes she would be a perfect beauty.”

“Wouldn’t she?” returned Wyn, happily. “I think my Polly Jolly is just the dearest looking creature. Isn’t she brown? And what pretty feet and hands she has!”

Polly wore a very short skirt, patched and stained. Her blouse was open at the throat, so that the soft roundness of the curve of her shoulder was plainly visible.

Out of the open neck of the blouse her deeply tanned throat rose like a bronze column; the roses in her cheeks and on her lips relieved the sun-darkened skin. Her hair was in two great plaits and it was evident that she seldom troubled about a hat. She was lithe, graceful as she could be, and bubbling over with good health if not good spirits.

And this was a morning–after the rain–to make even a lachrymose person lively. The smell of all growing things was in the nostrils–the warmth of the sun lapped one about like a mantle–it was a beautiful, beautiful day,–one to be remembered.

Wyn shouted and started running down the hill. Polly heard her, turned to see who it might be who called, and recognizing her friend, set out to meet her quite as eagerly.

“Oh, Miss Wynifred!” cried the boatman’s daughter.

“Polly Jolly! This is Frank Cameron.” She kissed Polly warmly. “How fine you look, Polly! Tell me! will all we girls look as healthy and be as strong as you are, by the autumn? You’re a picture!”

“A pretty shabby one, I fear, Miss Wyn,” protested Polly, yet smiling. “I am in the very oldest clothes I have, for there is much dirty work to be done around here. We have hardly got ready for the summer yet. Father has been so lame.”

“And you must introduce me to your father, Polly,” Wyn said, quickly. “We have something for him to do–if he will be so kind.”

“All you need to do is to say what it is, Wynifred,” responded Polly, warmly. “If either of us can do anything for you we will only be too glad.”

The three girls walked to the spot where Mr. Jarley was engaged upon his boat. He was not at all the sort of a person whom the girls from town had expected to see. The boatmen and woodsmen who sometimes drifted into Denton were rough characters. This man, after being ten years and more in the woods, savored little of the rough life he had followed.

He was a small man, very neat in his suit of brown overalls, with grizzled hair, a short-cropped gray mustache, and without color in his face save the coat of tan his out-of-door life had given him.

There was a gentle, deprecatory air about him that reminded Wyn strongly of Polly herself. But this manner was almost the only characteristic that father and daughter had in common.

Mr. Jarley was low-spoken, too; he listened quietly and with an air of deference to what Wyn had to propose.

“Surely I will come around and do all I can to aid you, Miss Mallory,” he said. “You shall pick out the stores you think you will need, and we will take a boat around to your camp. Your stores will be perfectly safe here–if you wish to risk them in my care,” he added.

“Of course, sir. And we expect to pay you for keeping them. If we have a long spell of rainy weather the dampness would be bound to spoil things in our tents.”

“True. This corrugated iron shack will keep the stores dry, and the door has a good padlock,” returned Mr. Jarley. “Now, you young ladies pick out what you wish carried over to the camp and I will soon be at your service.”

“Isn’t he nice?” whispered Wyn to Frank, when Polly had run into the house for something, and Mr. Jarley himself was out of hearing.

“Why! he is a perfect gentleman!” exclaimed Frank. “How can Bess talk as she does about him? I am surprised at her.”

“And these other people about here, too!” declared Wyn, warmly. “What an evil tongue Gossip has! That man–Shelton, is his name?–at the other end of the lake, who has accused Mr. Jarley of stealing his boat and the silver statues, ought to be punished.”

“Well–of course–we don’t know anything more about the Jarleys than these other people,” observed Frank, doubtfully.

“I judge people by their appearance a good deal, I suppose,” admitted Wyn. “And mother tells me that is a poor way to judge. Just the same, I feel that the Jarleys are being maligned. And I would love to help them.”

“Well! there isn’t much chance to do that unless you can prove that he is honest, after all,” remarked Frank.

“I know it. Everything is going to tell against him unless the lost boat and the images can be found. I wonder where it was sunk? Do you suppose Polly would tell us just where the accident happened?”

“Ask her.”

“I will, if I get a chance,” declared Wyn. “And wouldn’t it be fine if we girls could find the sunken boat and the box belonging to Dr. Shelton, and clear up the whole trouble?”

“Even that would not satisfy Bessie Lavine,” said Frankie, with a little laugh. “You know–Bess is ‘awful sot in her ways.’ When she has made up her mind that a thing is so, you can’t shake it out of her with a charge of dynamite!”

“You never tried the dynamite; did you, Frank?” queried Wyn, smiling.

“No! But I’ve wanted to–at times.”

“Bessie is like her father–obstinate. It is a family trait Yet, once get her turned around–show her that she has been wrong and unfair to anybody–and she can’t do too much for her to prove how sorry she is.”

“That’s right! look how she talked against the boys–especially against Dave Shepard. And now you can just wager she won’t be able to do enough for him to show how grateful she is for being pulled out of the water,” laughed Frank.

Mr. Jarley was ready to load the boat for them, and Polly came back with the key to the shack. Polly could not go over to the camp, for both she and her father could not leave the landing at once. Some fishermen might come along at any time to hire a boat. The season was opening now, and after the “lean months” that had gone by, the Jarleys had to be on the watch for every dollar that might come their way.

“It seems an awfully hard life for such a man–and for Polly,” whispered Wyn to her companion. “I’d just love to have Polly for a member of our club.”

“So would I,” agreed Frank. “She’s just as sweet as she can be. But Bess would go right up in the air!”

“Oh, I know it,” sighed Wyn. “Somehow we have got to make Bessie Lavine see the error of her ways. Oh, dear! why can’t people be nice to each other all the time?”

“Goodness me, Wyn Mallory!” exclaimed Frank. “What do you expect while there still remains ‘original sin’ in the world? That seems to have been left out of your constitution; but most of the rest of us have our share.”

CHAPTER X

THE “HAPPY DAY”

That day the camp upon the hill overlooking Lake Honotonka was completed. Mr. Jarley was very helpful, for beside laying the floors of the two tents, and setting up the stove, he built for the girls an open-air fireplace of flat rocks, dragged up from the shore; set up their plank dining table, cut and set three posts for their clothes-line (for they were to do their own laundry work), dug shallow ditches all around the tents, with a drain to carry off any water that might collect; built an “overlook-seat” at the foot of a big birch which overhung the water, and did countless other little services which most of the Go-Ahead Club appreciated.

Bessie Lavine did not come back from the berrying expedition until Mr. Jarley had gone back to the landing; and of course she hadn’t much to say about the change in the appearance of things. But the other girls were enthusiastic.

“And now we must have a name for the camp,” said Mrs. Havel, as they sat down to the oilcloth-covered table to dinner.

The arrangements for cooking and eating were of the simplest; yet everything was neat. Using oilcloth saved laundry, and using paper napkins was likewise a help. The food was served daintily, if simply, and although all the girls were used to much finer table service at home, the hearty appetites engendered by the pure air of lake and forest made even coarse food taste delicious.

They were all instantly enthusiastic over their chaperone’s suggestion. Half a dozen names were suggested on the spur of the moment; but no particular one met the approval of all the girls, immediately.

“We’ll have to draw lots,” suggested Mina.

“No! let’s each write down the best names we can think of, and then vote on them,” said Bess.

“Goody!” cried Frank. “We must have a name that fits, but is pretty and not too ‘hifalutin’,’ as my grandmother would say.”

“Naming the camp is all very well, girls,” said Wyn, seriously, rapping on the table for order. “But there are more important things to decide. The work of the camp is to be properly apportioned – ”

“Oh, dear me!” groaned Grace. “Have we got to work? After traipsing over four miles of huckleberry pasture all the morning I feel as though I had done my share for to-day.”

“And she ate as many as she picked!” cried Bess. “Oh, I’m going to tell on you, Miss! You’re not going to crawl out of your fair share.”

“I didn’t enlist to work,” declared Grace, with some sullenness. “What’s the fun of camping out if one has to work like a slave all the time?”

“And we haven’t even begun!” cried Frank. “For shame, Gracie!”

“Now, none of the members of the Go-Aheads, I feel sure,” quoth Wyn, quietly, “will try to escape her just burden. To have the fun of camping out under canvas we must each do our share of the work quickly and cheerfully. We will divide up the tasks, and change them about weekly. Of course, Mrs. Havel is not supposed to lift her hand. She is our guest.”

“Oh, but auntie is going to show us how to make pancakes,” cried Percy.

“I’ll learn to do that,” said Grace, brightening up. “For I love ’em.”

“Of course–piggy-wiggy!” scoffed Bess. “Come, Wyn, you set us our tasks and any girl who kicks about ’em shall be fined.”

“We’ll do better than that. We will use Mina’s idea of drawing lots about the work. There are certain things to be done each week–each day, of course. Two girls must ’tend fires and cook; two girls must air and make beds, clean up about the tents, and wait on table if needed; the other two must get up early and go for the milk and vegetables, gather berries, and do odd jobs. The girls who do the ‘chamber work’ should wash the dishes, too, for the cooks will be too tired and heated after preparing the meals to clean up the tables and mess with the dishwashing.

“Now are those three divisions satisfactory? Every third week, you see, the two who go for the milk, etcetera, will have an easy job. Is it agreed?”

There was no objection raised to this plan, and the girls paired off as they usually did–Wyn and Frank together, Grace and Percy, and Bess and Mina.

Then they drew straws–really grass blades of three lengths–to see which couple should do which. It fell to the lot of Bess and Mina to cook for a week. Grace and Percy Havel were “chambermaids,” and Wyn and Frank Cameron had the good luck to get the shortest blade of grass.

“Of course, I’d have to work hard two weeks before getting a chance to rest,” grumbled Grace. “Probably something will happen after we’re here a fortnight, and we’ll all have to go home.”

“It would take something awful to send me home from this beautiful spot in a fortnight,” cried Mina.

“Just my luck if you all got smallpox, or something equally contagious,” growled Grace.

“Then you certainly would be fortunate for once–if you escaped it,” chuckled Wyn.

“Not a bit of it. They’d quarantine you here, and have nurses, and lots of nice jellies and ices for you; while poor unlucky me would be packed back to Denton for the rest of the summer–and after working like a slave, dishwashing, and sweeping, and making beds, and cooking, and the like, for two whole weeks.”

Despite Grace’s complaints, the club as a whole was satisfied with the arrangements for taking care of the camp. There had been a secondary consideration in the minds of all their mothers when permission was obtained for the Go-Aheads to spend the summer under canvas. Mrs. Evelyn Havel was a wondrously good housekeeper. She had been trained in domestic science, too. And she had promised to have an oversight of each girl’s work and to teach them, from time to time, many helpful domestic things.

This phase of the camping-out plan Wyn had “played up” in getting the consent of all the parents; and for one, Wyn was determined to carry the scheme through. When they went back to Denton in the fall she proposed to be a good “plain cook” herself, and she hoped the other girls would fall in cheerfully with the project also. She knew Mrs. Havel would do all she could toward teaching them.

The work once apportioned to them, the girls’ minds could be given more particularly to the naming of the camp. But they would not decide upon it until bedtime. However, all six cudgeled their brains to invent striking names.

It was decided that only one name could be suggested by each girl, and this would give them a list of six to choose from. Oddly enough both Mina and Grace chose the same–Camp Pleasant. It looked as though that name had a lead at the start.

Frank suggested Birch Tree Camp–for there was an enormous birch on the knoll at the foot of which Mr. Jarley had set up a bench for them.

“Now you, Bess?” said Wyn, as mistress of ceremonies.

“Camp Pleasant is all right,” admitted Miss Lavine; “only it is not very distinctive. I expect there are thousands of Camp Pleasants–don’t you think so?”

“What’s the matter with my name?” demanded Frank Cameron.

“I find the same fault with it,” replied Bess. “It is not distinctive enough. Now, I don’t know that I have the right idea; but I believe that calling the camp after our club wouldn’t be so bad. And it would mean something.”

“Go-Ahead Camp? Or Camp Go-Ahead?” cried Grace.

“There’s nothing romantic about it, that’s sure,” objected Mina.

“Goodness me! we’re not looking for romance, I hope,” cried the strong-minded Bess.

“Bess is a suffragette in embryo–I declare!” cried Frank, laughing.

“How does Camp Cheer sound?” suggested Percy. “Now, that’s real nice, I think.”

“Say, we’ve got to vote on them, anyway,” said Grace. “We’ve got two votes for Camp Pleasant, Mina.”

“But hold on!” cried Frank. “Here’s one hasn’t been heard from. The shrinking violet of all our crew! What’s the matter, Wynnie? Can’t you decide on a name?”

“I thought of one last evening when we were paddling over here from the Forge–before the rain,” admitted the captain.

“Well! for pity’s sake!” gasped Grace. “That’s before we even knew it was to have a name.”

“I didn’t think particularly about naming the camp,” said Wyn, reflectively, “but from the water, with the squall working up behind us, and the last light of the day lingering on this little hill, the name flashed into my mind.”

“What is it?” chorused the others. “Do tell us, Wyn!”

“Green Knoll.”

“Just that?” cried Grace. “‘Green Knoll’? Why! It was green; wasn’t it?”

“I remember how green it seemed from the lake,” added Bess. “It’s not a silly name, either. It means something.”

“I take it all back about ‘Birch Tree Camp,’” declared Frank. “‘Green Knoll.’ There’s a dignity about that–as our assistant principal, Miss Hutchins, would say.”

“It’s a fine name, I think,” admitted Percy Havel, slowly. “I withdraw Camp Cheer. It may not be so cheerful here all the time–especially if we catch smallpox, as Grace says. But it will always be green up here on the knoll.”

“As long as we are here to see it, at least,” agreed Frankie, nodding.

“Say! our Camp Pleasant is swamped!” cried Grace. “What say, Mina? Shall we surrender?”

“Green Knoll sounds very pretty,” agreed the sweet-tempered Mina Everett.

“Oh, girls! do you really all like it?” Wyn cried.