That first day in camp the girls had no visitors. Through their binoculars and opera gla.s.ses, they could see the boys very active about their camp across the lake. It was plain they were too busy to visit Acorn Island.

The girls of Central High, however, had plenty of fun without the boys. Only Bobby declared that Lil princ.i.p.ally spent the time staring through her opera gla.s.ses across the lake, wishing Purt would come over in the _d.u.c.h.ess;_ but Lil angrily denied _that._

"And you stop trying to stir up a rumpus, Miss," commanded Laura, to the cut-up. "Let us live, if we can, like a Happy Family."

"My!" drawled Jess, "Mother Wit is nothing if not optimistic."

"Ha! what is your idea of an optimist?" demanded Nellie Agnew.

"Why," Jess said, smiling quietly, "I read of a real optimist once. He was strolling along a country road and an automobile came along and hit him in the back. It knocked him twenty feet.

"'Oh, well!' said he, as he got up, 'I was going in this direction, anyway.'"

"Aw, say!" put in Bobby, "that's all right for a _story;_ but _my_ idea of a real optimist is a man who's dead broke, going into a restaurant and ordering oysters on the half sh.e.l.l with the hope that he can pay for the dinner by finding a pearl in one of the bivalves."

They all laughed at that, and then Laura said:

"To get back to our original conversation, let us see if we can't get on in _this_ camp without friction. And that means that _you_, Bobby, must set a watch on your tongue."

"What do you suppose my tongue is--a timekeeper?" cried the irreverent Bobby.

Laura herself helped get dinner, the main dish of which was fried fish. And how good they tasted, fresh out of the lake!

Mrs. Morse had kept her typewriter tapping at a swift pace in the cabin, and she could scarcely be coaxed to leave her story long enough to eat dinner.

"This quietude is an incentive to good work," she said, reflectively, at table. "I shall be sorry to go back to town."

But it was very early in their experience to say _that._ Lizzie Bean was not yet an enthusiast for the simple life, that was sure. She and Mother Wit had gotten better acquainted during the preparations for the noonday meal.

"I ain't never been crazy about the country myself," admitted Liz.

"Cows, and bugs, and muskeeters, and frogs, don't seem so int'restin'

to me as steam cars, and pitcher shows, and sody-water fountains, and street pianners.

"I like the crowds, I do. A place where all ye hear all day is a mowin' merchine clackin', or see a hoss switchin' his tail to keep off the bluebottles, didn't never coax me, _much._"

"The bucolic life does not tempt you, then?" said Laura, her eyes twinkling.

"Never heard it called that afore. Colic's it serious thing--'specially with babies. But the city suits me, I can tell ye," said Liz.

"I never seen no-one that liked the woods like you gals seem to before, 'ceptin' a feller that lived in the boardin' house I worked at in Albany. He was a bug on campin' and fishin' and gunnin', and all that."

"Did you work in Albany?" queried Laura, surprised.

"Yep. Last year. I had a right good place, too. Plenty of work. I got up at four o'clock in the mornin' and I never _did_ get through at night!"

"Oh, my!"

"Yep. I love work. It keeps yer mind off yer troubles, if you have enough and plenty to do. But if yer have too much of it, yer get fed up, as ye might say. I didn't get time to sleep."

Laura had to laugh at that.

"Yep. That chap I tell you about was the nicest chap I ever see. He was kind to me, too. When I cut my thumb most off--see the scar?--a-slicin' bread in that boardin' house, the missis put me out 'cause I couldn't do my work."

"How mean!" exclaimed Laura.

"Ah! ye don't know about boardin' house missises. They ain't human,"

said Liz, confidently. "But Mr. Norman, he seen me goin' out with my verlise, and he knowed about my sore thumb. He slipped me five dollars out o' his pocket. But he was rich," sighed Liz, ecstatically. "He owned a bank."

"Owned a bank?" gasped Laura.

"Yep."

"And lived in a cheap boarding house?" for Laura knew that Liz could not have worked in a very aristocratic place.

"Well! he went to a bank every day," said the simple girl. "And if he warn't rich why should he have slipped me the five dollars?"

"True--very true," admitted Laura, much amused.

But she did not think it so funny that evening when, as the girls sat about a fire they had made in the open, singing and telling jokes, and Lizzie was washing up the supper dishes, a sudden shrill whoop arose from the cook-tent.

"Gee! what's that?" demanded the slangy Bobby.

"A mouse!" declared Nellie. "That funny girl must be just as much afraid of them as _I_ am."

"I hope it's nothing worse than a mouse," Lil said, tremblingly.

Laura had sprung up on the instant and run to the cook tent. Liz had dropped a pile of plates, and some of them were broken. She had deposited herself stiffly in a campstool. Her body was quite stiffened and her eyes fairly bulged--and it was not easy for Liz Bean's eyes _to_ bulge!

"What is the matter, Liz?" demanded Laura, seizing her by the shoulder.

"I seen him," gasped Liz.

"You have seen whom?"

"_Him_."

"But that doesn't mean anything to me," declared Laura, shaking her.

"Who _is_ he?"

"The feller I was tellin' you about. That feller that give me the five dollars."

"_What_?"

"Yes, Ma'am!" uttered Liz, solemnly. "He was standin' right yonder--just at the edge of them woods. I took the cover off the stove and the fire flashed out and showed me his face--just as plain!"

"You've been dreaming," said Laura, slowly.

"Git out!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Liz, with emphasis. "I never fell asleep yet washin' greasy dishes--no, Ma'am!"