GETTING USED TO IT
The boys were in haste to get to their own camping site, which was
across from the island on the southern shore of Lake Dunkirk. So they
hurried the baggage belonging to Mrs. Morse and the girls to the
cabin, and then prepared to embark again with their own boats.
Chet saw to it that everything appeared to be in good shape about the
camp on the island knoll, and he drew up the three canoes belonging to
the girls, himself.
"Now, if you girls get into trouble to-night, toot this thing," and
Chet produced an automobile horn which he had brought along for the
purpose. "If you need us by day, Laura knows how to wig-wag with those
flags. I taught her."
"For pity's sake, Chet!" exclaimed Jess, with some asperity. "Do you
suppose we are going to need you boys every hour, or so?"
"I hope not!" added Lil Pendleton. "Surely we ought to be able to get
along in camp just as well as you boys."
"Hear! hear!" cried Bobby. "How are you going to summon us if you need
help, my dear little boys? Sha'n't we give you each a penny whistle so
you can call us?"
Chet only laughed. Lance said: "We've been camping before; most of you
girls haven't. Of course you will get into trouble forty times to our
once."
"Well! I like that," sniffed Jess, who did not like it at all. "If
girls aren't just as well able to take care of themselves, as boys,
I'd like to know why."
"Jess is getting to be a regular suffragette," chuckled Dora
Lockwood.
"Reminds me of the little girl whose mother was chasing the hens out
of the garden," said Laura, with her low laugh. "The hen-chaser
declared that 'You can't teach a hen anything, to save your life,'
when the little girl spoke up for her sex, and said: 'Well! I think
they know quite as much as the roosters!'"
"And that's all right," teased Lance, as the boys got under way. "I
bet this bunch of hens on Acorn Island will holler for us roosters
before we set the distress signal for _them_."
"Get out, you horrid thing!" cried Bobby. "Calling us hens. We're only
pullets, at best."
A lantern had been lit in each tent, for the shadows were thickening
under the oak trees on the knoll. Lizzie Bean at once began to
overhaul the cooking utensils and supplies in the cook-tent.
This tent was divided into two parts. Lizzie's own cot was in the rear
apartment. There was a long table, roughly built but serviceable, in
the front with the stove and chest of drawers. There were folding
campstools in plenty.
In the cabin was a comfortable straw mattress for Mrs. Morse in the
wide bunk, a small table on which her typewriter case already stood, a
rocker made in rustic fashion, a painted dressing case with mirror of
good size, and shelves for books.
A small fire was burning on the hearth, for the cabin was apt to be
damp after its many months of abandonment. It had been swept and
garnished with boughs of sweet-smelling spruce and pine.
The girls' sleeping tent housed seven cots, all supplied with
unbleached cotton sheets and heavy double blankets. Lil Pendleton
looked about it when she brought in her bag, and shivered.
"Goodness!" she said. "I'm glad we're 'way out here in the wilderness
if we're going to dress and undress in this thing. Why! I shall feel
just as much exposed as though the sides were made of window-glass."
"What nonsense!" sniffed Bobby, who had been camping with her father
and had spent many a night in a tent. "You're too particular, Lil."
"Who asked _you_ to put in your oar?" demanded Miss Pendleton,
crossly. "I have a right to my opinion, I hope."
"I should hope it was nobody else's opinion," returned Miss Bobby,
quick to pick up the gauntlet.
"Hush, girls!" advised Mother Wit. "Let us not be quarrelsome. We
don't want Mrs. Morse to think we are female savages right at the
start."
Lil sniffed; but good-tempered Bobby said, quickly: "You're right,
Laura. I beg the company's pardon--and Lil's particularly. We must be
'little birds who in their nest agree.'"
"You're a fine bird, Bobby," laughed Dora. "Come on! I hear the dishes
rattling. Let's see what Lizzie has tossed up for supper."
"I wonder if she managed to boil the water without burning it?"
giggled Jess. "She's the funniest girl!"
"I should think you and Laura could have found a maid who wasn't quite
such a gawk," muttered Lil, unpleasantly.
"Hush!" admonished Mother Wit. "Don't let her hear you."
"Why not?" snapped Lil.
"You will hurt her feelings."
"Pooh! she's paid for it----"
"Not for having her feelings hurt," declared Laura, sternly. "And I
won't have it. She's odd; but she is quite as quick of hearing as the
next person."
"Aw, you're too particular, Laura," drawled Lil. But she stood a
little in awe of Mother Wit.
They joined Mrs. Morse and filed into the cook-tent. Lizzie's flushed
face appeared behind the steaming biscuits and a big platter of ham
and eggs. They did not really know how hungry they were until they sat
down to these viands.
Lizzie stood with arms akimbo and waited for the verdict upon the
cooking.
"Most excellent, Lizzie," Mrs. Morse said, kindly.
"Suits ye, does it?" asked the strange girl. "I flatter myself them
biscuits air light enough to sleep on."
"They are a good deal more feathery than our 'downy couches' here in
camp, I warrant, Lizzie," laughed Laura.
"Glad ye like 'em. There's plenty of biscuits--don't be bashful."
Jess giggled when she saw Lil's face. "How rude!" muttered Miss
Pendleton. "I don't see what you and Mother Wit were thinking about
when you hired that girl."
"Thinking of you, Lily--thinking of you," declared Jess. "She will
willingly do your share of the dish-washing."
"Dish-washing? Fancy!" exclaimed Lil. "I'd like to see myself!"
"Well I wouldn't," put in the omnipresent Bobby. "Not if I had to eat
after your manipulation of the dish-mop."
"But we didn't come to do anything like _that_," wailed Lil.
"Just the same we have got to do a part of the camp work," declared
Mother Wit. "It all can't be shoved off onto Lizzie."
"Let us arrange about that right here and now," suggested Mrs. Morse.
"Oh, Mrs. Morse!" cried Nell, eagerly. "First of all I vote that Mrs.
Morse is not called upon to do a thing! She's company as well as
chaperon."
"I will make my own bed," said the lady, smiling. "You girls can take
turns sweeping and dusting the cabin, if you like."
"And making the beds and cleaning up our tent," added Laura. "Two at a
time--it won't seem so hard if two work together."
"A good idea," agreed Mrs. Morse.
"But that leaves an odd girl," suggested Jess.
"We'll change about. The odd girl shall help the cook. And one meal a
day--either breakfast, dinner, or supper--we girls must cook, and
Lizzie is going to have nothing to do with that meal."
"Why! _I_ can't cook," wailed Lil again.
"Good time for you to begin to learn, then," Laura said, laughingly.
Some of the other girls looked disturbed at the prospect. "I can make
fudge," observed Nell, honestly, "but I never really tried anything
else, except to make toast and tea for mother when she was ill and the
maid was out."
"Listen to that!" exclaimed the voice of Lizzie Bean, who had been
listening frankly to the dialogue. "An' I been doin' plain cookin' an'
heavy sweepin' and hard scrubbin' ever since I was knee-high to a
toadstool!"
Bobby burst out laughing. "So have I, Lizzie!" she cried. "Only I have
done it for Father Tom and my kid brothers and sisters when Mrs.
Betsey was sick."
Lily Pendleton turned up her nose--literally. "We're going to have
trouble with that girl," she announced to Nellie. "She doesn't know
her place."
But whatever Lizzie knew, or did not know, she did not shirk her share
of the work. She stayed up after everybody else had retired and
washed every pot and pan and plate, and set her bread to rise for
morning, and stirred up a big pitcher of flapjack flour to rise over
night, peeled potatoes to fry, leaving them in cold water so they
would not turn black, and set the long table fresh for breakfast.
When the earliest riser among the girls (who was Laura herself) peeped
into the cooking tent at daybreak, the fire in the stove was already
roaring, and Lizzie had gone down to the shore to wash her face and
hands in the cold water. Laura ran down in her bathing suit.
"What do you think of this place, Lizzie?" she asked the solemn-faced
girl.
"For the land's sake, Miss!" drawled Lizzie Bean, "I never had no idea
the woods was so lonesome--for a fac'."
"No?"
"I sh'd say not! I went to bed and lay there an' listened. The trees
creaked, and the crickets twittered, and some bird had the nightmare
an' kep' cryin' like a baby----"
"I expect that was a screech-owl, Lizzie," interrupted Laura. "They
come out only at night."
"Goodness to gracious! Do they come out _every_ night?" demanded the
girl.
"I expect so."
"And them frogs?"
"They are tree-toads. Yes, they are here all summer, I guess."
"Goodness to gracious! And folks like to live in the woods? Well!"
"Do you think you can stand it?" queried Laura, much amused, yet
somewhat anxious, too.
"As long as I'm goin' to get all that money every week it'll take more
than birds with the nightmare an' a passel of frogs to drive me away.
Now! when do you want breakfast, Miss?"
"Not until Mrs. Morse gets up. And none of the other girls are out
yet," said Laura.
But very soon the other girls began to appear. They had agreed to have
a dip the first thing, and the girls who first got into the water
squealed so because of the cold, that it routed out the lie-abeds.
Lily would not venture in. She sat on a stump, with a blanket wrapped
around her, and shivered, and yawned, and refused to plunge in with
the others.
"And it's so early," she complained. "I had no idea you'd all get up
so early and make such a racket. Why, when there isn't school, I
_never_ get up before nine o'clock."
"Ah! how different your life is going to be on Acorn Island," said
Bobby, frankly. "You'll be a new girl by the time we go back home."
"I don't want to be a new girl," grumbled Lily.
"Now, isn't that just like her?" said Bobby, _sotto voce_. "She is
perfectly satisfied with herself as she is. Humph! Lucky she _is_
satisfied, I s'pose, for nobody else could be!"