CHAPTER VIII.

GWEN.

Bill Tinsley was as keen on the camp building plan as Lewis Somerville had said he would be.

"Sleeping on my arms," was his telegram in answer to the letter he got from Lewis, a letter with R. S. V. P. P. D. Q. plainly marked on the envelope.

"Good old Bill! I almost knew he would tumble at the chance. All of you will like Bill, I know."

"What does he mean by sleeping on his arms?" asked Lucy. "I should think it would make him awfully stiff."

"Oh, that means ready to go at a moment's notice. I bet his kit is packed now."

Mr. Lane and d.i.c.k had worked hard on the plans for the camp and had them ready when the would-be builder called for them. Then Mr. Lane and Lewis made a flying trip to Greendale to look into the lay of the land and to decide on a site for the dining pavilion. It was a spot about one hundred yards from the log cabin, built by the aforesaid sick Englishman, that seemed to them to be intended for just their purpose.

It was a hollowed out place in the mountain side, not far from the summit, and four great pine trees formed an almost perfect rectangle of forty by twenty-five feet. In the centre stood a n.o.ble tulip poplar.

"Pity to sacrifice him," said Bill Tinsley, whom they had picked up at Charlottesville on their way to Greendale. Bill was a youth of few words but of frequent mirth expressed in uncontrollable fits of laughter that nothing could stop, not even being shipped from West Point. It was this very laugh that had betrayed the hazers. If Bill had only been able to hold in that guffaw of his they would never have been caught. His laugh was unmistakable and through it the whole crowd of wrongdoers was nabbed, poor Lewis along with them although he was innocent.

"No more to blame for laughing than a lightning bug for shining," he had declared to Lewis; "but I wish I had died before I got you into this, old fellow."

"Well, it can't be helped, but I bet you will be laughing on the other side of your face before you know it."

The youths had remained fast friends and now that this chance had come for them to be of service and to use the surplus energy that was stored up in their splendidly developed muscles, they were happy at the prospect of being together again.

Mr. Lane took careful measurements and adapted his plans so as to utilize the four trees as natural posts and the great tulip poplar as a support for the roof. Under the pavilion the s.p.a.ce was to be made into kitchen and store room. Some little excavating would be necessary for this as measurements showed that one edge of the pavilion would rest almost on the mountain side while the other stood ten feet from the ground.

"I am trying to spare you fellows all the excavating possible, as that is the tedious and uninteresting part of building," explained Mr. Lane.

"Oh, we can shovel that little pile of dirt away in no time," declared Lewis, feeling his muscles twitch with joy at the prospect of removing mountains. Mr. Lane smiled, knowing full well that it was at least no mole hill they were to tackle.

Within a week after Mr. and Mrs. Carter had sailed on their health-seeking voyage, Lewis and his chum were _en route_ for Greendale, all of the lumber for their undertaking ordered and their tools sent on ahead by freight. Bill had gone to Richmond, ostensibly to consult a dentist, but in reality to see the Carter girls, who had aroused in him a great curiosity.

"They must be some girls," had been his laconic remark.

"So they are, the very best fun you ever saw," Lewis had a.s.sured him.

"They took this thing of waking up and finding themselves poor a great deal better than you and I did waking up and finding ourselves nothing but civilians when we had expected to be major generals, at least."

The Carter girls had one and all liked Bill, when Lewis took him to call on them the evening of his arrival in Richmond.

"There is something so frank and open in his countenance," said Helen.

"His mouth!" drawled Nan. "Did you ever see or hear such a laugh?"

"He is a great deal nicer than your old Dr. Wright, who looks as though it would take an operation on his risibles to get a laugh out of him."

Bill had offered the services of a battered Ford car he had in Charlottesville as pack mule for the camp and it was joyfully accepted.

He and Lewis stopped in Charlottesville on their way to Greendale and got the tried old car, making the last leg of their trip in it.

They had decided to sleep in the Englishman's cabin, as the little log house that went with the property was always called, but Miss Somerville had made them promise to burn sulphur candles before they went in and was deeply grieved because her beloved nephew refused to carry with him a quart bottle of crude carbolic acid that she felt was necessary to ward off germs.

It was late in the afternoon as the faithful Ford chugged its way up the mountain road to the site of the proposed camp. The boys had stopped at the station at Greendale and taken in all the tools they could stow away, determined to begin work at excavating the first thing in the morning.

"Let's lay out the ground this afternoon," proposed Lewis.

"There's nothing to lay out since the four pine trees mark the corners.

I, for one, am going to lay out myself and rest and try to decide which one of your cousins is the most beautiful."

"Douglas, of course! The others can't hold a candle to her, although Helen is some looker and Nan has certainly got something about her that makes a fellow kind of blink. And that Lucy is going to grow up to her long legs some day and maybe step ahead of all of them."

"Well, I'm mighty glad you thought about giving me this job of working for such nice gals." These young men always spoke of themselves as being in the employ of the Carter girls, and all the time they were building the camp they religiously kept themselves to certain hours as though any laxity would be cheating their bosses. Besides, the regular habits that two years at West Point had drilled into them would have been difficult to break.

"I don't know how to loaf," complained Lewis. "That's the d.i.c.kens of it."

"Me, neither!"

"They say the Government makes machines of its men."

"True! I am a perpetual motion machine."

They were busily engaged on their first morning in the mountains, plying pick and shovel. They bent their brave young shoulders to the task with evident enjoyment in the work. When they did straighten up to get the kinks out of their backs, they looked out across a wonderful country which they fully appreciated as being wonderful, but raving about landscapes and Nature was not in their line and they would quickly bend again to the task in a somewhat shamefaced way.

The orchards of Albemarle County in Virginia are noted and the green of an apple tree in May is something no one need be ashamed to admire openly, but all these boys would say on the subject was:

"Good apple year, I hope."

"Yep! Albemarle pippins are sho' good eats."

Moving mountains was not quite so easy as they had expected it to be.

They remembered what Mr. Lane had said about excavating when the sun showed it to be high noon and after five hours' steady work they had made but little impression on the pile they were to dig away.

"Gee, we make no impression at all!" said Lewis. "I verily believe little Bobby Carter could have done as much as we have if he had been turned loose to play mud pies here."

"Well, let's stop and eat. I haven't laughed for an hour," and Bill gave out one of his guffaws that echoed from peak to peak and started two rabbits out of the bushes and actually dislodged a great stone that went rolling down the side of the mountain into an abyss below. At least, his laugh seemed to be the cause but Bill declared it was somebody or something, and to be sure a little mountain boy came from behind a boulder, grinning from ear to ear.

"What be you uns a-doin'?"

"Crocheting a shawl for Aunty," said Lewis solemnly.

"Well, we uns is got a mule an' a scoop that could make a shawl fer Aunty quicker'n you uns." This brought forth another mighty peal from Bill and another stone rolled down the mountain side.

"Good for you, son!" exclaimed Lewis. "Suppose you fetch the mule here this afternoon and we'll have a sewing bee. What do you say, Bill? Do you believe we would ever in the world get this dirt moved?"

"Doubt it."

"Do you uns want we uns to drive the critter? We uns mostly goes along 'thout no axtra chawge."