Margaret Penrose - The Motor Girls at Camp Surprise - or, The Cave in the Mountains

“Look where you are steering, Cora Kimball! You nearly ran over a chicken that time.”

“Yes, and avoiding the chicken on that side, you nearly hit a child on this side. Such a dear little boy – or was it a girl? I never can tell when they’re so young.”

“Two misses are as good as two miles,” misquoted the bronzed girl at the wheel of the automobile, as she straightened the car on the long, shaded road, where the trees met in a green archway overhead, and where the golden shadows flitted in the dust like so many little chickens running to cover, away from the fat-tired wheels.

“Why are you in such a hurry, Cora?” asked Bess Robinson, as she tucked back a straying lock of brown hair. “It’s too perfect a day to do anything in a hurry – even run a car.”

“Bess doesn’t believe in doing anything in a hurry,” lazily droned her sister Belle, from the rear seat. “That’s why she’s so fat.”

“Don’t dare use that objectionable word!” stormed Bess, turning about so suddenly that she sent Cora’s elbow against the plunger of the horn, thereby producing a sudden blast.

“Oh!” exclaimed Bess. “Did we run into something again?”

“Again?” demanded Cora. “Come, I like that – not! We haven’t run into anything yet.”

“That chicken,” murmured Belle, even more lazily. “Yes?”

“Was a good fifty feet out of danger!” declared Cora indignantly.

“And what of the child?”

“That never was in danger. I didn’t see him – her or it – until we had passed. But the child – gender unknown – was playing in the dust beside the road. Queer how mothers can let them.”

“Probably the mother didn’t know a thing about it,” said Bess, who had discovered that she was the sole cause of the needless alarm in regard to the horn’s blast. “One can’t be always on the lookout.”

“Don’t start a discussion,” begged Cora, as a backward glance showed some signs of Belle’s stirring up sufficiently to refute her sister’s remarks. “It’s too hot.”

“It is when you slow down,” observed Bess. “But the breeze is perfectly fascinating when you keep the car moving, Cora.”

“Well, I don’t intend to slow down right away. Have you girls any particular desire to go to any particular place?”

“Spare us all nerve-racking particulars on a day like this,” entreated Belle, sliding down into a more comfortable position in the big, cushioned seat she occupied all alone. “It is so warm! Summer is coming with a vengeance.”

“And it makes me wish we had set the date of our departure for Camp Surprise a week or so earlier,” remarked Cora. “I wonder if we could arrange to go any sooner.”

“I could,” declared Bess. “I haven’t a thing to do.”

“Except reduce,” put in her sister tantalizingly.

“Belle Robinson! If you don’t stop those mean, insinuating remarks, I’ll – I’ll – ”

“You won’t give me any more of those chocolates you sneaked into your bag as we were coming out,” finished Belle. “I saw you, and you know what Dr. Blake told you would happen if you didn’t stop eating sweets. You’ll get so – ”

“These aren’t sweet!” interrupted Bess. “They’re the bitter kind, and they’re delicious, too. They have them so fresh at Gordon’s.”

“It’s a wonder she wouldn’t give us a chance to decide for ourselves, instead of introducing expert testimony on her own account,” laughed Cora. “Come, Bess, out with them!”

“Certainly,” agreed the plump girl, with easy grace. “I intended to share them all along, but it was so warm – ”

“Don’t say warm again!” drawled her sister. “Your nose is as shiny now as a tin teakettle.”

“Belle Robinson! It is not!”

Instantly Bess had her little mirror and vanity box in use, and a quick dab on her rather up-turned nose did away with the condition complained of, or at least alleged, by her sister.

“There, does that satisfy you?” she asked, turning about for inspection, as Cora swung the big car around a turn in the road.

“Oh, I’m easily satisfied,” Belle murmured. “What a perfectly gorgeous view!” she cried, as she looked down from a height toward a village that lay nestled in a green valley, girt around by a winding, silvery river, glimpses of which could be had now and then between the trees that lined the shores.

“Yes, it is a good view,” agreed Cora, stopping the car. “Cheerful Chelton looks even more amiable and love-like than usual to-day. It’s cooler up here, too. Now pass over those chocolates, Bess.”

“And watch her get more and more – well, I’ll say plump – before your eyes, like that fat boy Scott tells about,” laughed Belle.

“It wasn’t Scott’s fat boy. He was in Dickens,” corrected Cora. “Nicholas Nickleby, I think.”

“Pickwick Papers!” voiced Bess. “There! I know something even if I am – plump. But, girls, I have lost five pounds in the last month.”

“Not so’s you’d notice it,” murmured Belle.

“Cease! Cease and have done!” admonished Cora. “How does that new one go – two slow and one quick to the side and then – ”

“Not slow at all!” interrupted Bess. “You’ve got to follow through or you’ll slice the ball and – ”

“What in the world are you talking about?” demanded Cora, her eyes opening wide. “Slice the ball? What’s that in? The fox trot?”

“I was speaking of golf,” murmured Bess.

“She’s taken it up to – reduce,” whispered Belle.

“I thought you meant that new three-step we tried the other night,” came from Cora.

“It’s too warm even to talk about dancing,” declared Belle. “Really we must think of getting away sooner. Do you think we could get that bungalow at Camp Surprise earlier than we had planned to take it, Cora?”

“I don’t know. Mother made all the arrangements. But I can find out. Do you really think you’d like to go sooner?”

“I certainly do,” murmured plump Bess, who seemed to feel the sudden summer heat more than did Cora, or the more svelt Belle. “Oh, by the way, Cora! why do they call it Camp Surprise?”

“I meant to ask that, too,” added Belle. “It’s such an odd name.”

“And there’s an odd story connected with it,” said Cora. “I’ll have to ask mother about it. She merely mentioned it, and something else came up so I forgot to get the particulars. I’ll find out when we go back. But if you girls are really in earnest about starting our summer vacation a little earlier this year – ”

“I most certainly am in earnest,” Bess said.

“And I,” added her sister.

“Then I’ll see what we can do,” went on the girl at the wheel. “Oh dear! I wish I hadn’t eaten those chocolates!” she exclaimed, making a wry face. “I ought to have known better. Candy always makes me thirsty, and I didn’t bring the vacuum bottle.”

Belle sat up, carefully removed, with the tip of her tongue, some brown chocolate stains from the tips of her pink, well-manicured fingers and, looking up and down the road, announced:

“That dear little tea room – Ye Olde Spinning Wheel – is only about a mile farther on. Suppose we go there? I’m dying for a cup of tea with lemon in it.”

“Oh, so am I!” added Bess. “They say lemon is thinning.”

“Then you’d better have lemonade with a leaf or two of tea in it,” said Belle.

“You – you – ” spluttered Bess, drawing back her hand in which nestled a chocolate. And then her desire to throw it was overcome by her appetite for the confection.