Gertrude Morrison - The Girls of Central High in Camp - or, the Old Professor's Secret

“Laura!” gasped her mother, while her father and Chet burst out laughing.

“It’s the finest game in the world,” declared Laura, stoutly.

“Hear! hear!” from Chet.

“I’ve been to see the games a lot with father Saturday afternoons,” began Laura, when her mother interposed:

“Indeed? That is why you are so eager always to spend your forenoons with your father on Saturday?”

“Oh, Mother! I really do help father in the jewelry-store – don’t I, Dad?”

“Couldn’t get along without you, daughter,” said Mr. Belding, stoutly.

“And he always takes me for a nice bite in a restaurant,” pursued the girl, “and then if there’s a game, we go to see it.”

“Runaways!” said Mrs. Belding, shaking an admonishing finger at them. “So you encourage her in these escapades, do you, Mr. Belding?”

“Quite so, Mother,” he returned. “You’re behind the times. Girls are different nowadays – in open practise, at least – from what they were in our day. Of course, I remember when I first saw you–”

“That will do!” exclaimed Mrs. Belding, flushing very prettily, while the children laughed. “We will not rake up old stories, if you please.”

Any reference to the occasion at which her husband hinted, usually brought his wife “to time,” as Chet slangily expressed it. She agreed to be present at the girls’ gymnasium on that last day when the girls used the paraphernalia as they pleased, with Mrs. Case standing by to direct, or admonish, or advise.

Mrs. Belding found in the gallery overlooking the big gymnasium floor many of her neighbors, church friends, or fellow club-members.

“I’ve been trying to get here for months,” one stout lady confided to the Market Street jeweler’s wife; “but it does seem to me I never have a minute to spare. But Lluella says that I must come now, for the term is ending. That’s Lluella over yonder jumping on that mat. Isn’t she quick on her feet?”

“Grace is such a reckless child,” complained the lady on Mrs. Belding’s other side. “She’s her father all over again – and he’s got the quickest temper of any man I ever saw. Gets over it right away, you know; but it’s a trial to have a man get mad because the coffee’s muddy of a morning.”

“Oh, I know all about that ,” sighed the fleshy lady, windily.

“I don’t suppose there’s really any danger of the children getting hurt here, Mrs. Belding?” proceeded the thin mother.

“I believe not. Laura says there is no danger–”

“Oh, your Laura is a regular athlete!” interrupted the fat woman. “My Lluella says she is just wonderful .”

“So does my Grace,” declared the thin lady on the other side. “She says there’s nobody like ‘Mother Wit,’ as she calls Laura.”

“I think there is no danger,” murmured Mrs. Belding, not sure whether she was glad or sorry that her daughter was so popular.

“Oh, Mrs. Belding! are you here?” broke in rather a shrill voice from the rear. “I told Lily I would come to-day; but really, I hardly knew whether it was the thing to approve of this gymnasium business–”

Mrs. Pendleton’s voice trailed off as it usually did before she completed a sentence. She was a small, extremely vivacious, black-eyed woman, much overdressed, and carrying a lorgnette with which she eyed the crowd of girlish figures on the floor below.

“Of course,” she murmured to Mrs. Belding, “if you approve–”

“Where is Grace now?” cried the thin lady, suddenly. “Mercy! See where she has climbed to. Do you suppose they can get her without a ladder?”

Grace, a thin, wiry child of the wriggling type, had successfully clambered up the rope almost to the beam overhead and was now surveying the gallery with lofty compassion, which included a lively appreciation of her mother’s uneasiness.

“Oh, Grace!” shrilled the thin woman. “Get down this instant! Or do you want me to bring you a ladder?”

An appreciative giggle arose from some of the girls below. Grace turned rather red around her ears, and began to descend. It was one thing to make her mother marvel; she did not want her “act” to be turned to ridicule.

“They look real pretty – now don’t they?” admitted Mrs. Pendleton, loftily, after surveying the gymnasium for some time through her lorgnette. “Lily’s dress cost us a deal of trouble. But she looks well in it. She’s well developed for her age and – thank goodness! – she has a chic way with her.

“I thought we never would get the suit to fit her. And she changed her shoes three times,” added the society matron. “Finally I told her if she was going to have nervous prostration getting ready to take physical culture, she’d better wait and take it when she was convalescent.”

“I hope Lluella will be careful of her hands,” said the fleshy lady on Mrs. Belding’s right. “She’s always bruising or cutting her fingers. Just like her aunt. Her aunt always had to wear gloves doing her housework.”

“There! they are going to march,” cried the thin lady, as Mrs. Case blew her whistle and the girl on the rope slid the last few feet to the floor. “Grace is down, thank goodness!”

“Her music teacher says Grace’s ear is a regular gift – she keeps such good time.”

“I’m sure no sensible parent would ever have bought those ears,” whispered Mrs. Pendleton to Mrs. Belding. “They must have been a gift,” for those organs on the agile Grace were painfully prominent.

“But she had such a pretty smile when she looked up at her mother just now,” whispered the kind-hearted Mrs. Belding.

“That reminds me,” said the society matron – though why it should have reminded her nobody knows! “That reminds me, my Lily is crazy to go camping – positively crazy!”

“I know,” sighed Mrs. Belding. “Laura is determined, too. And her father approves and has overruled all my objections.”

“Oh, it’s not that with me at all,” said Mrs. Pendleton, briskly. “I’m glad enough to have the child go. She’s too much advanced for her age, anyway. If she spends this summer at Newport, and Bar Harbor, and one or two other places where I positively must appear, I’ll never be able to get her back into school this fall.

“It ages a mother so to have a growing daughter – and one that is so forward as Lily,” said this selfish lady, fretfully. “Lily thinks she is grown up now. No. I approve of her going with a lot of little girls into camp. And she wants to go with your Laura’s crowd, Mrs. Belding.”

“I’m sure – Laura would be pleased,” said Mrs Belding, sweetly, without an idea that she was laying up trouble in store for Mother Wit.

“Oh, then, I can leave it with you, dear Mrs. Belding?” cried Mrs. Pendleton, with uncanny eagerness. “You will arrange it?”

“Why – er – I presume Laura and her friends would have no objection to another of their schoolmates joining them. I understand Mrs. Morse will chaperon them–”

“And quite a proper person for that office, too,” agreed Mrs. Pendleton. “I presume they will take along a maid.”

“Oh! I do not know,” said Mrs. Belding, beginning to feel somewhat worried now. “I imagine the girls expect to do for themselves–”

“Oh! I will send a maid with Lily. At least, I will pay the wages of one who will do for all the girls – in a way.”

She bustled away to find Lily after the march. Mrs. Belding waited for her daughter in more or less trepidation. It had suddenly crossed her mind that Lily Pendleton was seldom at her house with the friends that Mother Wit gathered about her.