The Girls of Central High in Camp.

by Gertrude W. Morrison.

CHAPTER I

WHERE, OH, WHERE?

Field day was past and gone and the senior cla.s.s of Central High, Centerport's largest and most popular school, was thinking of little but white dresses, bouquets, and blue-ribboned diplomas.

The group of juniors, however, who had made the school's athletic record for the year in the Girls' Branch Athletic League, had other matters to discuss--and in their opinion they were matters of much greater moment.

"Boiled down," stated Bobby Hargrew, "to its last common divisor, it is 'Where, oh, where shall we spend our vacation?'"

They had decided some weeks before--Bobby herself, Laura Belding, Jess Morse, the Lockwood twins and Dr. Agnew's daughter, Nellie--that a portion at least of the long summer vacation should be spent in camp.

The mooted question was, where?

"No seash.o.r.e resort," Nellie said, with more decision than she usually displayed, for Nellie was of a timid and peaceful disposition.

"No," agreed Laura Belding. "We'll eschew the three S's--'sun, sand, and 'skeeter-bites.' That is the slogan of the seash.o.r.e resort.

Besides, it costs too much to get there."

"That's an important item to take into consideration, girls, if _I'm_ to go," said Jess Morse.

"I thought you were a millionairess?" laughed Bobby. "Where are the royalties from your play?"

"Those won't begin till the producer puts the play on next season,"

returned Jess, who had been fortunate in writing a play for amateur production good enough to interest a professional theatrical manager.

"Well, we've got to have _you_, Jess," said Bobby (otherwise Clara) Hargrew. "For we're depending upon your mother to play chaperon for the crowd, wherever we go."

"Let's find a quiet spot, then," said Jess, eagerly. "Mother wants to write a book this summer and she says she would love to be somewhere where she doesn't need to play the society game, or dress----"

"Back to the Garden of Eden for hers!" chuckled Bobby. "Eve didn't have to dress--that is, not before _Fall_."

"Aren't you awful, Bobby?" cried one of the Lockwood twins--but _which_ one it was who spoke could not have been sworn to by their most familiar friend. Dora and Dorothy looked just alike, dressed just alike, their voices were alike, and they usually acted in perfect harmony, too!

"Well," pursued Laura Belding, "if we are going to spend the first weeks of the summer vacation in camp, we must decide upon the spot at once. Are we all agreed that we shall not go to the salt water?"

"Oh, yes!" cried her particular chum, Jess, or Josephine, Morse.

"None of the troubles of the seaside boarder for ours," Bobby announced, hurriedly groping amid the rubbish in her skirt pocket and bringing forth a crumpled newspaper clipping. Bobby insisted upon having a pocket in almost every garment she wore (it was whispered that she wore pajamas at night for that reason) and no boy ever carried a more heterogeneous collection in his pockets than she did.

"See here! here's one seaside visitor's complaint," and she intoned in a singsong voice the following doggerel:

"'Why don't red-headed girls get tanned?

Why does a collar wilt?

Why is the sea so near the land?

Why were the billows built?

Why is the "crawl-stroke" hard to learn?

Why is the sea ba.s.s shy?

Why is the nose the first to burn?

Why is the stinging fly?

"'Why do mosquito nettings leak?

Why do all fishers lie?

Why does the grunter-fish always squeak?

Why do they feed us on clam-pie?

Why does the boardwalk hurt the feet?

Why is the seaweed green?

Why can't a bathing suit look neat?

Why won't straw hats stay clean?

"'Why----'"

"Stop it!" shrieked Jess, covering her ears. "How _dare_ you read such preposterous stuff?"

"'Whys to the wise,' you know," giggled Bobby.

"I vote we refuse to allow Bobby to go camping with the crowd unless she positively refrains from quoting verse on any and every occasion,"

drawled Nellie.

"Hardhearted creature!" cried Dora Lockwood. "Poor Bobs couldn't live without that 'scape-gap."

"By the way, girls," Laura Belding asked, briskly, "are we going to let any other girls join this camping party--or is it to be just us six?"

"Who else wants to go?" demanded Bobby, quickly.

"Lil Pendleton----"

"Always that!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Bobby, in disgust.

"Why, Bobby!" cried Dorothy. "I thought you and Lilly kissed and made up?"

"Oh, yes--we did," grunted the smaller girl. "That is, we kissed. Lil was already made up."

"Now, Bobby!" admonished Laura.

"That's horrid of you, Bobby," Nellie declared. "You are incorrigible."

Yet they all had to laugh. Bobby Hargrew _was_ just a cut-up!

"I'm worse than the long word you called me, Nell," said little Miss Hargrew. "But we're not going to have any such spoil-sport as Lil Pendleton along."

"But Chet and Lance say that Prettyman Sweet has begged so hard to go camping with _them_, that they're going to take him--just for the fun they will have at his expense, I s'pose," said Laura.

"That's why Lil wants to go camping," Dora said. "She's got such an awful crush on Pretty Sweet that she wants to do everything he does."