The son, an aesthetic looking youth of seventeen, who was d.i.c.k's acquaintance, was carried away with the wild phlox and went into ecstasies over the branch of dogwood which Helen had placed near a j.a.panese print in the library.

"Let's take it, Mamma! It is perfect!" he exclaimed as he stood enraptured by the effect.

Helen always declared that the market flowers rented the house, and so they may have.

CHAPTER VII.

A COINCIDENCE.

"Almost time for Dr. Wright!" exclaimed Douglas. "I believe I heard the R. F. & P. stop at Elba. I do wonder what he is going to say."

"He is going to say we are a set of fools and lunatics and refuse to let us have any money to start the camp. Since we have been so extravagant and selfish for all these years, he'll think we ought to go to the poor house, where we belong," said Helen, frowning. "I can see him now looking through his eyebrows at me with the expression of a hairy wildman in a show."

Dr. Wright came with good news of the travelers. He had not only seen them safely on board but had sailed with them, coming back with the pilot. He reported Mr. Carter as singularly calm and rested already and Mrs. Carter as making an excellent nurse. Evidently he was rather astonished that that poor lady could make herself useful, and Helen, detecting his astonishment, was immediately on the defensive; but as Dr.

Wright was addressing his remarks princ.i.p.ally to Douglas, almost ignoring her, she had no chance to let him know what she thought of his daring even to think slightingly of poor little Mumsy.

"I have a scheme for you girls, too, if you won't think I am presumptuous to be making suggestions," he said, now including all four of the sisters.

Of course, Douglas and Nan a.s.sured him that they considered it very kind of him to think of them at all, but Helen tossed her head and said nothing. Lucy waited to see what Helen would do and did the same thing, but she could not help smiling at the young doctor when he laughed out-right at her ridiculous mimicry of Helen. He flushed, however, showing he was not quite so callous to Helen's scorn and distrust as he would have liked to appear.

"I think the wisest thing for you to do would be to rent this house, furnished, if you can find a tenant----"

"We've done it!" exclaimed Helen triumphantly.

"That is, we have got a tenant if you think it is best," explained Douglas. "We were going to do nothing without your approval."

"Oh, come now! I have no jurisdiction over you," laughed the young man.

"Isn't power of attorney jurisdiction?" asked Lucy. "Nan says I can't have any more stockings until you permit me."

"Well, well! I must be a terrible bugaboo to you! I don't feel at all qualified to judge of your stockings, little girl, or anything else pertaining to the female attire. It was the merest accident that I was given power of attorney. I am not in the least an appropriate person to be having it. I only consented to have it wished on me when I saw your father was becoming excited and tired over the unexpected hitch when the notary spoke of Miss Douglas's not being of age. I have transferred what cash your father has to your sister's account. I must find out from you whom you want to look after your affairs and consult that person----"

"But, Dr. Wright, we would lots rather have you, if you don't mind!"

exclaimed Douglas. "Any of our kinsmen that we might call on would insist upon our coming to live with them or make us go to some stuffy boarding house or something. They would not look at it as I believe you would at all. We have a scheme, too, but we want to hear yours first."

"My scheme was, as I say, first to rent your house, furnished, and then all of you, with some suitable older person and some man whom you can trust, go and camp out on the side of the mountain in Albemarle. What do you say to it?" The girls burst out laughing, even Helen.

"Dr. Wright, this is absolutely uncanny!" exclaimed Douglas. "That is exactly what we were planning!"

"Only we were going you some better and were to have boarders," drawled Nan.

"Boarders, eh, and what do you know about keeping boarders?" laughed the doctor.

"We know enough not to do the way we have been done by at summer boarding houses where we have been sometimes."

"Well, all I can say is that I think you are a pretty s.p.u.n.ky lot. Please tell me which one of you thought up this plan. There must surely have been a current of mental telepathy flowing from one of you girls to me.

It was you, I fancy, Miss Douglas."

"No, I am never so quick to see a way out. It was Helen."

"Yes, Helen thought of it, but I came mighty near doing it," declared Lucy. "I would have done it all the way but I went to sleep."

Helen looked as though she did not at all relish having anything even so intangible as a current of mental telepathy connecting her with one whom she was still determined to look upon as an enemy. He was gazing at her with anything but the eyes of an enemy, however, and Nan's remark about his eyes looking like blue flowers high up on a cliff that you must climb to reach, came back to her. She felt that those flowers were in easy reach for her now; that all she had to do to make this rugged young man her friend was to be decently polite. But her pride was still hurt from his former disapproval and while his present att.i.tude was much better, she still could not bring herself to smile at him. She was very quiet while the other girls unfolded their plans for the camp. She did not take so much pleasure in it now that it was not altogether her scheme. To think that while she was working it up this b.u.mptious young doctor was doing the same thing!

"The keeping boarders part of it was mine, though," she comforted herself by thinking.

Dr. Wright was really astonished by the quickness with which these spoiled girls had acted and their eagerness to begin to be something besides the b.u.t.terflies they had seemed. Douglas told him of the plans for the camp that the a.s.sistant in the office was to draw for them, and then showed him some of the advertis.e.m.e.nts of their boarding camp that Nan had been working on all day.

"This is sure to draw a crowd of eager week-enders," he declared. "In fact, I believe you will have more boarders than the mountain will hold."

"I thought it best to have kind of catchy ads that would make people wonder what we were up to anyhow," said Nan. "Now this one is sure to draw a crowd: 'A week-end boarding camp, where one can have all of the discomforts of camping without the responsibility.' Here is another: 'Mountain air makes you hungry! Come to The Week-End Camp and let us feed you.'"

"Fine!" laughed the young man. "But please tell me how you plan to feed the hungry hordes that are sure to swarm to your camp. Do you know how to cook?"

"Helen can make angel's food and I know how to make mayonnaise, but sometimes it goes back on me," said Nan with the whimsical air that always drew a smile from Dr. Wright.

"I can make angel's food, too," declared Lucy.

"Well, angel's food and mayonnaise will be enough surely for hungry hordes."

"Of course, we are going to take some servants with us," said Helen, breaking the vow of silence that she was trying to keep in Dr. Wright's presence. "Old Oscar, our butler, and Susan, the housemaid, have both volunteered to go. I can make more things than angel's food, and, besides, I am going to learn how to do all kinds of things before we go."

"That's so, you can make devil's food," teased Nan. "Somehow I didn't like to mention it."

"Cook is going to teach me to make all kinds of things. I am going to get dinner to-morrow and have already made up bread for breakfast. I am going to buy some of the cutest little bungalow ap.r.o.ns to cook in, pink and blue. I saw them down town this morning. They are what made me think of learning how to cook."

"I'm going to learn how to cook, too, and I must have some ap.r.o.ns just like Helen's."

"All of us are Camp Fire Girls," said Douglas to the doctor, "and of course we have learned some of the camping stunts, but we have not been as faithful as we might have been."

"I am an old camper and can put you on to many things if you will let me."

"We should be only too glad," responded Douglas sincerely.

"One of the first things is canvas cots. Don't try to sleep on all kinds of contrived beds. Get folding cots and insure comfortable nights.

Another is, don't depend altogether on camp fires for cooking. Kerosene stoves and fireless cookers come in mighty handy for steady meal getting. It will be another month at least before you go, won't it?"

"Just about, I think, if we can manage it. We have school to finish and I have some college exams that I want to take, although I see no prospect of college yet. Another thing I want to discuss with you, Dr.

Wright, is selling our car. I think that might bring in money enough for us to pay for all the camp fixtures and run us for awhile."

"Certainly; I'll see about that for you immediately."

The young man took his departure with a much higher opinion of the Carter sisters than he had held twenty-four hours before. As for the Carter sisters: they felt so grateful to him for his kindness to their parents and to them that their opinion of him was perforce good. Helen still sniffed disdainfully when his name was mentioned, but she could not forget the expression of approval in his blue eyes when he found that the camping scheme was hers.