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[Illustration: A PARTY OF PARENTS AND FRIENDS CAME TO SEE THE
CAMPERS START. _Girls of Central High in Camp_ _Page 49_]
THE GIRLS OF CENTRAL HIGH IN CAMP
or
THE OLD PROFESSOR'S SECRET
by
GERTRUDE W. MORRISON
Author of The Girls of Central High,
The Girls of Central High on
Lake Luna, Etc.
ILLUSTRATED
THE SAALFIELD PUBLISHING CO.
AKRON, OHIO NEW YORK
MADE IN U. S. A.
Copyright, 1915, by
GROSSET & DUNLAP
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. Where, Oh, Where? 1
II. Plans for the Summer 12
III. Visitors' Day 20
IV. "Lonesome Liz" 29
V. The Start 39
VI. Prettyman Sweet Makes a Friend 50
VII. The Barnacle 61
VIII. Up Rocky River 72
IX. The Camp on Acorn Island 80
X. Getting Used to It 92
XI. Liz Sees a "Ha'nt" 102
XII. The "Kleptomaniantic" Ghost 114
XIII. The Search of the Island 121
XIV. "More Fun Than a Little" 128
XV. The Barnacle Has a Nose 137
XVI. Where the Barnacle's Nose Led Him 144
XVII. A Perfectly Unsatisfactory Interview 152
XVIII. An Eventful Fishing Trip 159
XIX. The Young Man With the Gun 170
XX. Laura Keeps Her Secret 175
XXI. The Sheriff With His Dogs 182
XXII. Where Professor Dimp Comes in Big 189
XXIII. Liz on the Defensive 196
XXIV. The Barnacle Trees Something at Last 201
XXV. "Quite All Right" 207
THE GIRLS OF CENTRAL HIGH IN CAMP
CHAPTER I
WHERE, OH, WHERE?
Field day was past and gone and the senior class of Central High,
Centerport's largest and most popular school, was thinking of little
but white dresses, bouquets, and blue-ribboned diplomas.
The group of juniors, however, who had made the school's athletic
record for the year in the Girls' Branch Athletic League, had other
matters to discuss--and in their opinion they were matters of much
greater moment.
"Boiled down," stated Bobby Hargrew, "to its last common divisor, it
is 'Where, oh, where shall we spend our vacation?'"
They had decided some weeks before--Bobby herself, Laura Belding, Jess
Morse, the Lockwood twins and Dr. Agnew's daughter, Nellie--that a
portion at least of the long summer vacation should be spent in camp.
The mooted question was, where?
"No seashore resort," Nellie said, with more decision than she usually
displayed, for Nellie was of a timid and peaceful disposition.
"No," agreed Laura Belding. "We'll eschew the three S's--'sun, sand,
and 'skeeter-bites.' That is the slogan of the seashore resort.
Besides, it costs too much to get there."
"That's an important item to take into consideration, girls, if _I'm_
to go," said Jess Morse.
"I thought you were a millionairess?" laughed Bobby. "Where are the
royalties from your play?"
"Those won't begin till the producer puts the play on next season,"
returned Jess, who had been fortunate in writing a play for amateur
production good enough to interest a professional theatrical manager.
"Well, we've got to have _you_, Jess," said Bobby (otherwise Clara)
Hargrew. "For we're depending upon your mother to play chaperon for
the crowd, wherever we go."
"Let's find a quiet spot, then," said Jess, eagerly. "Mother wants to
write a book this summer and she says she would love to be somewhere
where she doesn't need to play the society game, or dress----"
"Back to the Garden of Eden for hers!" chuckled Bobby. "Eve didn't
have to dress--that is, not before _Fall_."
"Aren't you awful, Bobby?" cried one of the Lockwood twins--but
_which_ one it was who spoke could not have been sworn to by their
most familiar friend. Dora and Dorothy looked just alike, dressed just
alike, their voices were alike, and they usually acted in perfect
harmony, too!
"Well," pursued Laura Belding, "if we are going to spend the first
weeks of the summer vacation in camp, we must decide upon the spot at
once. Are we all agreed that we shall not go to the salt water?"
"Oh, yes!" cried her particular chum, Jess, or Josephine, Morse.
"None of the troubles of the seaside boarder for ours," Bobby
announced, hurriedly groping amid the rubbish in her skirt pocket and
bringing forth a crumpled newspaper clipping. Bobby insisted upon
having a pocket in almost every garment she wore (it was whispered
that she wore pajamas at night for that reason) and no boy ever
carried a more heterogeneous collection in his pockets than she did.
"See here! here's one seaside visitor's complaint," and she intoned in
a singsong voice the following doggerel:
"'Why don't red-headed girls get tanned?
Why does a collar wilt?
Why is the sea so near the land?
Why were the billows built?
Why is the "crawl-stroke" hard to learn?
Why is the sea bass shy?
Why is the nose the first to burn?
Why is the stinging fly?
"'Why do mosquito nettings leak?
Why do all fishers lie?
Why does the grunter-fish always squeak?
Why do they feed us on clam-pie?
Why does the boardwalk hurt the feet?
Why is the seaweed green?
Why can't a bathing suit look neat?
Why won't straw hats stay clean?
"'Why----'"
"Stop it!" shrieked Jess, covering her ears. "How _dare_ you read such
preposterous stuff?"
"'Whys to the wise,' you know," giggled Bobby.
"I vote we refuse to allow Bobby to go camping with the crowd unless
she positively refrains from quoting verse on any and every occasion,"
drawled Nellie.
"Hardhearted creature!" cried Dora Lockwood. "Poor Bobs couldn't live
without that 'scape-gap."
"By the way, girls," Laura Belding asked, briskly, "are we going to
let any other girls join this camping party--or is it to be just us
six?"
"Who else wants to go?" demanded Bobby, quickly.
"Lil Pendleton----"
"Always that!" ejaculated Bobby, in disgust.
"Why, Bobby!" cried Dorothy. "I thought you and Lilly kissed and made
up?"
"Oh, yes--we did," grunted the smaller girl. "That is, we kissed. Lil
was already made up."
"Now, Bobby!" admonished Laura.
"That's horrid of you, Bobby," Nellie declared. "You are
incorrigible."
Yet they all had to laugh. Bobby Hargrew _was_ just a cut-up!
"I'm worse than the long word you called me, Nell," said little Miss
Hargrew. "But we're not going to have any such spoil-sport as Lil
Pendleton along."
"But Chet and Lance say that Prettyman Sweet has begged so hard to go
camping with _them_, that they're going to take him--just for the fun
they will have at his expense, I s'pose," said Laura.
"That's why Lil wants to go camping," Dora said. "She's got such an
awful crush on Pretty Sweet that she wants to do everything he does."
"That dude!" scoffed Bobby.
"He and Lil make a good pair," said Jess.
"Wait a minute!" cried Dorothy Lockwood. "Where are the boys going to
camp this year, Laura?"
"On the shore of Lake Dunkirk, somewhere."
"Say, Mother Wit," cried Bobby, addressing by her universal nickname
the leader of the crowd of Central High girls. "Wouldn't it be fun to
camp near--That is, providing the boys are all nice."
"Well, beside Chet and Lance and Pretty Sweet, there'll be Short and
Long, Reddy Butts and Arthur Hobbs, anyway. I don't know how many
more," Laura said. "But you know that Chet and Lance wouldn't have any
but nice fellows in their crowd."
"Barring Pretty," said Bobby, "they are all good chaps--so far. We
wouldn't mind having them for neighbors.
"And why can't we?" she added, suddenly. "Why, girls! Father Tom has
recently bought into the Rocky River Lumber Company and that company
owns Acorn Island."
"Acorn Island? Great!" declared Jess.
"That's the big island in Lake Dunkirk, you know," explained Laura to
the Lockwood twins, who looked puzzled.
"Acorn Island is just the finest kind of a place for a camp," said the
enthusiastic Jess. "It's just like a wilderness."
"Right! The company isn't going to cut the timber on the island till
next winter. Father Tom says so."
"I've been to picnics on Acorn Island," said Nellie Agnew. "It _is_ a
beautiful spot."
"Acorn Island it is, then," cried Bobby. "Hurrah! We'll spend our
vacation there!"
She almost shouted this declaration. The girls had been lingering to
talk in the high school yard and were now at the gate. Nellie suddenly
tugged at Laura's sleeve and whispered:
"Look there! _what_ do you suppose is the matter with Professor
Dimp?"
Bobby spun around at the word, having heard the sibilant whisper. She
likewise stared at the rusty-coated gentleman who had just passed the
gate, having come from the main entrance of the Central High
building.
"Gee!" exclaimed the slangy Bobby. "What's got Old Dimple now? What
have _I_ ever done to him--except massacre the Latin language?--and
that's a 'dead one,' anyway!"
The Latin teacher--the bane of all careless and ill-prepared boys and
girls of the Latin class--was a slightly built, stoop-shouldered man
who never seemed to own a new coat, and was as forgetful as a person
really could be, and be allowed to go about without a keeper.
He often passed the members of his class on the street without knowing
them at all; the boys said you might as well bow to a post as to Old
Dimple!
But here he had taken particular notice of Bobby Hargrew; indeed, he
stopped to turn around and glare right at her--just as though she had
said something particularly offensive to him as he passed the group.
"Goodness!" murmured Jess. "If you're not in trouble with Gee Gee,
Bobs, you manage to get one of the other instructors down on you. What
have you done to the professor?"
"Nothing, I declare!" said Bobby, plaintively.
"If you'd murdered his grandmother he couldn't look any harder at
you," chuckled Dora Lockwood.
The professor suddenly saw that he had disturbed the party of
schoolgirls. He actually flushed, and turned hurriedly to move away.
As he did so he pulled a big, blue-bordered handkerchief from the tail
pocket of his frock-coat. That pocket was notably a "catch-all" for
anything the poor, absent-minded professor wished to save, or to which
he took a fancy. Once Short and Long (otherwise a very short boy named
Long) dropped a kitten into the professor's tail pocket and the
gentleman did not discover it until he reached for his bandana to wipe
his moist brow when he stood up to lecture his Latin class.
However, it was nothing like a kitten that followed the blue-bordered
handkerchief out of the voluminous skirt-pocket. A crumpled clipping
from a newspaper fell to the walk as Professor Dimp strode away.
Bobby Hargrew's quick eye noted the clipping first, and she darted to
retrieve it. She came back more slowly, reading the printed slip.
"What is it, Bob?" asked Jess, idly.
"Why, Clara!" exclaimed Laura Belding, "aren't you going to give it
back to him?"
"Look here, girls!" ejaculated the excited and thoughtless Bobby,
looking up from the newspaper clipping. "What do you think of this?
Old Dimple must be secretly interested in modern crime as well as in
the murdered ancient languages. This is all about those forgeries in
the Merchants and Miners Bank, of Albany. You know, they say a young
fellow--almost a boy--did them; and he can't be found and they don't
know what he did with the money obtained by the circulating of the
false paper."
"My! Our Aunt Dora lost some securities. She just wrote us about it,"
Dorothy Lockwood said, eagerly.
"And he wasn't much but a boy!" murmured Nellie. But Laura said,
sharply: "Bobby! that's not nice. Run after Professor Dimp and give
the clipping to him."
"Gee! you're so awfully particular," grumbled the harum-scarum. But
she started after the shabby figure of the Latin teacher and caught up
with him before Professor Dimp had reached the end of the next
block--for Bobby Hargrew had taken the palm in the quarter mile dash
at the Girls' Branch League Field Day and there were few girls at
Central High who could compete with her as a sprinter.
When she returned to the group of her friends, still eagerly
discussing the plane for their camping trip, her footsteps lagged.
Laura noticed the curious expression on the smaller girl's face.
"What _has_ happened you, Bobby?" she demanded.
"Why! I'm so surprised," gasped Bobby. "I must have done something
_awful_ to Old Dimple. When he saw what it was I handed him, he
grabbed it and just snarled at me:
"'Where did you get that, Miss Hargrew?'
"And when I told him, he looked as though he didn't believe me and had
to search his pocket to make sure he _had_ dropped it. And he looked
at me so fiercely and suspiciously. Goodness! I don't know what I've
done to him."
"He's odd, you know," suggested Mother Wit.
"That's all right," said Bobby, somewhat tartly; "but what the
mischief he wants to bother himself about where we go camping----"
"What do you mean, Bobs?" demanded Jess, while the other girls all
looked amazed.
"Why he said to me just now," answered the disturbed girl, "'you girls
better keep away from Acorn Island. That's no place for you to go
camping.' And then walked right off with his old clipping, and without
giving me a chance to ask him what he meant," concluded Bobby
Hargrew.