The Meadow-Brook
Girls on the Tennis
Courts
OR
Winning Out in the Big Tournament
By
JANET ALDRIDGE
Author of the Meadow-Brook Girls Under Canvas, The Meadow-Brook
Girls Across Country, The Meadow-Brook Girls
Afloat, The Meadow-Brook Girls in The Hills,
The Meadow-Brook Girls by The Sea,
etc., etc.
THE SAALFIELD PUBLISHING COMPANY
Akron, Ohio New York
Made in U. S. A.
Copyright MCMXIV
_By_ THE SAALFIELD PUBLISHING COMPANY
CONTENTS
Chapter. Page.
I. Smoke Rings From the Hills 7
II. The Tramps Guard Their Secret 17
III. Keeping the Girls in Suspense 24
IV. An Unpleasant Surprise 33
V. The Tramp Club Receives a Shock 40
VI. A Discouraging Try-Out 48
VII. The Meadow-Brook Girls Change Their Minds 60
VIII. On the Service Line 69
IX. A Cloud with a Silver Lining 81
X. A Joy and a Disappointment 88
XI. A Blow That Nearly Killed George 99
XII. A Guest Who Was Welcome 114
XIII. In the Hands of a Master 123
XIV. A Steam Roller to the Rescue 137
XV. Would-Be Cup Winners Break Camp 147
XVI. In Camp on the Battle Field 156
XVII. The Cup That Lured 170
XVIII. What the Spy Learned 179
XIX. On the Tournament Courts 190
XX. A Welcome Disturbance 199
XXI. A Disaster in Camp 208
XXII. An Exciting Morning 216
XXIII. A Memorable Battle 227
XXIV. Conclusion 245
The Meadow-Brook Girls on the Tennis Courts
CHAPTER I
SMOKE RINGS FROM THE HILLS
“I want thome exthitement,” complained Grace Thompson petulantly.
“Have patience, Tommy,” answered Jane McCarthy. “Did you ever know the
Meadow-Brook Girls to go long without it?”
“I don’t know that we can look for anything exciting up here on this side
hill, surrounded by stumps, burned trees and blackened logs,” returned
Margery Brown. “I shall just perish from doing nothing. We have been up
here nearly two days and nothing has happened. I should rather be down in
the meadows than up here in this dismal place.”
Miss Elting, the guardian of the party of girls encamped on the hillside,
smiled tolerantly.
“Wait,” she advised.
“I’ll tell you what,” suggested the towheaded Tommy. “Buthter, you are
fat and round. We’ll thcrape off a thmooth plathe all the way down the
thide of the hill, then you roll down to the bottom. That will give you
exthitement and make uth laugh, too.”
“But there is a jumping-off place at the bottom,” objected Margery. “I
should fall down on the stones.”
“Yeth, I know. But that would be exthitement and make uth laugh. Why
thhould you be fat, if it ithn’t to make other folkth laugh?”
Margery elevated her nose disdainfully.
“Do it yourself,” she answered.
“Yes, Tommy. You wish excitement. Suppose you run down and jump into the
creek at the bottom of the hill,” called Harriet Burrell, raising a
flushed face from the fire over which she was cooking their supper. “Run
down and jump in. If the water is deep, you might pretend you are
drowning; then Margery will rush to your rescue and save you. Drowning is
exciting enough. I know, for I was nearly drowned once.”
“I fear a little trout stream at the foot of a hill would not prove very
exciting to a girl who has been lost at sea for hours on a dark night,”
observed the guardian. “You will have to think of something else,
Harriet. Are you, too, suffering from inactivity?”
“Not at all. Miss Elting,” answered Harriet brightly. “I came out here
with you for the sake of the outing, for the fresh air and the birds and
the odors of——”
“Burned stumps,” finished Margery. “The whole place smells like a country
smoke-house, where the farmer smokes his hams for the winter. Ugh!”
“As far as I am concerned,” resumed Harriet Burrell, “I am not looking
for excitement. I am enjoying myself thoroughly. What is more, were I
looking for the unusual, I do not think it would be necessary to look far
for it.”
Tommy regarded her companion with narrowed eyes and wrinkled forehead.
“Do you know thomething that we don’t know, Harriet?”
“Perhaps I do and perhaps not,” was the evasive reply. “Why don’t you use
your eyes and your ears and your nose, you and Margery?”
“My nose?” sniffed Buster. “That’s the trouble. This horrible, smoky,
burned smell makes me ill. When I shut my eyes I think the side of the
hill is on fire right this minute, instead of a year or so ago, or
whenever it was.”
She gazed first down the slope to the valley below, where a slender
stream was to be seen threading its way through the blackened landscape,
then up the hill to where the trees had begun to grow again after the
forest fire had seared their leaves and blackened their young trunks. The
trees were making a noble fight for life, the green at their tops showing
that some success had attended their unequal fight. Here and there
blackened slabs of granite protruded from the uninviting landscape
between the camp of the young women and the denser forest beyond, which
the fire had failed to reach. Still farther on the campers saw the road
that led back to their homes at Meadow-Brook.
The small tent, that had been packed in sections, had already taken on
something of the dispiriting color of the landscape in which it had been
set. Within the tent the girls had leveled off the ground as well as
possible and dug deep trenches on the uphill side, so that they might not
be drowned out in case of a heavy rainstorm. They had chosen this
uninviting spot principally because it was different from any place in
which they had made camp during their summer vacations of the past two
years. They could easily shift to another location were they to tire of
this one. One advantage of the present site lay in the fact that it was
removed from human habitation by some miles. Their own homes lay about
twelve miles to the eastward.
Hazel Holland, the fifth girl of the Meadow-Brook Girls’ party, also saw
that Harriet had something in mind. She walked over near the fire and sat
down, regarding Harriet inquiringly.
“What do you mean, Harriet?” she questioned.
“I haven’t said. Use your eyes. I am too busy getting supper now to make
any explanations. Haven’t you girls seen anything unusual?”
“Yes, I have,” answered Margery. “Everything is unusual around here—too
much so to suit my cultivated tastes.”
“There ith thome mythtery here,” observed Tommy Thompson wisely.
Miss Elting asked no questions. She knew that Harriet would speak of what
was in her mind when she was ready to do so. The supper was soon cooked,
the dishes set on a blanket, which had been spread on a fairly level
place. Other blankets had been laid down on which the girls took their
places with their feet curled underneath them. The dishes were mostly tin
and paper, but the supper, smoking and steaming on the blanket, was
savory and appetizing. The girls forgot their dismal surroundings in the
pleasure of eating what Harriet Burrell had prepared for them, though
Margery did her best to look sour, in order to hide her satisfaction,
while Tommy now and then regarded her with a smile.
“I don’t believe Buthter intendth to thtop eating to-night,” was the
little lisping girl’s comment.
“You stop making remarks about me,” exploded Buster. “Didn’t I tell you I
should go right back home if you did it again this summer?”
“Buthter never liketh to hear the truth about herthelf,” averred Tommy
with an impish grin.
“The truth!” exclaimed the now angry Margery. “I’ll never speak to you
again, Grace Thompson.”
“If you girls only knew how silly you are, you would reform,” said
Harriet.
“The only way for a fat perthon to reform ith to run all day in the hot
thun,” answered Tommy. “Why don’t you try it, Buthter?”
Margery glared speechlessly at her tormentor, but before she could frame
a fitting reply Hazel suddenly asked Harriet a question that quickly
changed the current of thought in the minds of the two disputants.
“Perhaps you will tell us what you meant when you made that remark a
short time ago, Harriet,” she said.
“What remark, Hazel?”
“About not having to look far for excitement, about using our eyes, ears
and noses,” replied Hazel. “What did you mean?”
“Just what I said,” repeated Harriet.
“Be good enough to explain, pleathe?” urged Tommy. “I’m not clever at
guething riddleth.”
“Had you girls used your ears, you would have heard something; had you
used your eyes, you would have seen smoke; had you used your noses, you
would have smelled smoke. Now do you understand?”
“Yeth, I underthtand,” replied Tommy after a brief interval of silence.
“What do you understand?” demanded Margery.
“That Harriet ith lothing her mind. Maybe thhe’ll find it under the
blanketth.”
“More likely to find a snake under there,” suggested Hazel, whereat there
were screams from Tommy and Buster, who sprang to their feet, gazing at
the ground with a frightened expression in their eyes. “Sit down if you
wish any more supper,” urged Hazel, laughing.
“That wathn’t funny in the leatht, Hathel,” declared Grace severely. “Now
tell uth truthfully, Harriet, what you meant by hearing and theeing and
thmelling thingth?”
“Here, I will draw you a map.” Harriet traced a square in the ashes with
a stick, making a round dot in the lower left-hand corner. “This dot is
the camp of the Meadow-Brook Girls,” she said. “At the extreme upper side
are the woods that you see over the brow of the hill, and these,” making
a series of rings, “are smoke—smoke rings. Well, why doesn’t some one say
something?” she chuckled.
“Smoke rings?” questioned the guardian.
“Yes, Miss Elting.”
“Where?”
Harriet Burrell waved one hand toward the brow of the hill, giving the
guardian a meaning look.
“What do you mean?”
“That we have neighbors,” replied Harriet calmly.
“Neighbors!” screamed Margery.
“Where? who? what?” asked the girls in chorus.
“Thave me! I thhould die of fright if I were to thee a thtrange human
being again,” cried Tommy. “Do—do you think it ith a man, a real live
man?”
Harriet Burrell nodded. Tommy’s eyes grew larger.
“I think it is. Perhaps more than one. Listen. I heard some one shout
shortly before I began getting the supper. Then as I was getting the fire
going I saw smoke rings rising from the forest up yonder. They were well
done and they were signals.”
“Indianth!” breathed Grace. “Grathiouth! We’ll all be thcalped. Oh, thave
uth!”
“I answered them by making some smoke signals. There wasn’t enough smoke
in my fire, though, to do it very well.”
“So that is what you were up to?” laughed Jane McCarthy. “I thought you
were fanning the fire with the blanket.”
“I made the answering sign, which they answered in turn; then there were
no more smoke signals from either side. That is all I know about it.”
“Smoke signals,” reflected the guardian. “I know of no one in these parts
who would know how to make them. Do you?”
“Well, no; no one whom we have reason to look for here at this time. But
I have my suspicions. If I am right, we shall know about it either
to-night or early to-morrow morning.”
“Oh! tell us,” begged Margery eagerly. “Please do tell us what you
think.”
“Pleathe don’t,” commanded Tommy sharply. “If I know, then I won’t be
curiouth any more. If I don’t know, I’ll lie awake all night thinking and
guething about it, and oh, I tell you I’ll enjoy it! I do love a
mythtery, and thith ith a mythtery, ithn’t it, Harriet?”
“We will call it that. No, not a word, girls; not another word to-night.
I don’t want to spoil Tommy’s pleasant prospects. Think what a lot of
comfort she will get out of worrying for fear that sometime during the
night a party of Indians may swoop down on us, cut off the top of Tommy’s
head and run away with her flaxen locks.”
“Can you beat it?” glowed Jane McCarthy. “I almost have the shivers
myself.”
“If you girls persist in working up a fright, I see a nice case of
nightmare for some of you before morning,” warned Miss Elting. “I am
inclined to the belief that what you saw must be a camp of timber
cruisers or lumbermen. There are no Indians up here, nor would any tramps
come to this desolate place. Please don’t be foolish. Go on with your
supper and put aside this nonsense.”
“I don’t want to put it athide!” exclaimed Tommy. “I jutht want to be
thcared till I’m all fluthtered up; then I want to be thcared thome
more.” Tommy leaped from the blanket and dived head first into their
little tent.
At that moment a chorus of wild war-whoops rose from the bushes all about
them. Yell upon yell sounded, and a great threshing about in the bushes
sent the hearts of the Meadow-Brook Girls to their throats—so it seemed
to them. Margery Brown, frightened nearly out of her wits, sprang up and
started to run down the hill diagonally from the camp. She caught her
foot on the stub of a burned-off sapling, plunged headforemost and went
rolling down a sharp incline, her cries of alarm heard but faintly by her
companions.