"Why, it's Tommy!" exclaimed Laura Belding. "Whatever is the the matter, Tommy?" for the little fellow was crying softly.

He was a most cherubic looking child, with a pink and white face, yellow curls that swept the clean collar of his shirt-waist, and a plump, "hug-able" little body.

"Yes, what _is_ the matter, dear?" begged Jess Morse.

"H-he's gone an' cut off th-the tails of the pu-puppies," sobbed Master Tommy, his breast heaving.

"Who has?" demanded Laura.

"He. That man what co-comed here," choked the little fellow.

"What a pity! I'm awfully sorry," Laura pursued, soothingly. "The poor little puppies."

"Ye-yes. Pa s-said _I_ should chop 'em off myself!" concluded Master Tommy in a burst of anger.

"My goodness me!" gasped Jess, horror-stricken. "Will you hear that boy talk? He's a perfect little savage."

"No, he isn't," said Mother Wit, shaking her head. "He's only a boy--that's all. You never had a brother, Jess."

"I know well enough Chet was never like _that_," declared Josephine, confidently.

They went in by the front gate and walked around the house, leaving the disappointed youngster wiping his eyes. They expected to find Lizzie Bean at the back.

In that they were not mistaken. At the well-curb was a lank, bony girl, who might have been Laura's age, or perhaps a couple of years older. She was dreadfully thin. As she hauled on the chain which brought the br.i.m.m.i.n.g bucket to the top of the well, she betrayed more red elbow and more white stockinged ankle-bone than any _one_ person should display.

"My goodness, she's thin!" whispered Jess.

"We are not looking for a Hebe to help us at the camp," Laura returned in the same low tone.

Lizzie Bean turned to see who was approaching. Her face was as thin as the rest of her figure. Prominent cheek bones, a sharp, long nose, and a pointed chin do not make a beautiful countenance, to say the least.

Besides, the expression of her face was lachrymose in the extreme. It did seem, as Jess afterward said, that Lizzie must have lost all her relatives and friends very recently, and was mourning for them all!

"Goodness me!" she whispered to Laura. "No wonder they call her 'Lonesome Liz.' She's so sad looking she's positively funny."

CHAPTER V

THE START

"What do you girls want?" drawled the lean girl, resting her red elbows on the well-shelf and looking down at Laura and Jess Morse.

She did not speak unpleasantly; but she was very abrupt. Laura saw that Lizzie Bean's flat, shallow appearing eyes were of a greenish gray color--eyes in which a twinkle could not possibly lurk.

"We understand that you are not going to help Alice much longer,"

Laura said, pleasantly. "So we have come to see if you would like another position for a few weeks?"

"What d'ye mean--a _job_?" proposed Liz-Bean, bluntly.

"Ye-yes," said Laura, rather taken aback.

"What doin'?"

"Why, we girls are going camping. There are seven of us--and Mrs.

Morse. Mrs. Morse is the mother of my friend, here, Josephine Morse----"

"Please ter meet yer," interposed Liz, bobbing a little courtesy at the much amused Jess.

Laura went on steadily, and without smiling too broadly at Liz:

"There are seven of us girls and Mrs. Morse. We shall live very simply--in tents and in a cabin, on Acorn Island."

"Eight in fam'bly, eh?" put in the thin girl. "Eight is a bigger contract than I got here."

"Oh! in camping out we don't expect anything fancy," Laura hastened to say. "We want somebody to make beds, and wash dishes, and clean up generally. Of course, the cooking will not _all_ fall on your shoulders----"

"I sh'd hope not," said Liz, briskly. "Not if it was as solid as some folkses' biscuits. One woman I worked for once made her soda-riz biscuits so solid that if a panful had fell on yer shoulders 'twould ha' broke yer back."

Jess _had_ to explode at that, but the odd girl did not even smile.

She only stared at the giggling Jess and asked:

"Ain't ye well?"

"Oh, yes!" gasped Jess.

"Well, I didn't know," drawled Liz. "My a'nt what brought me up useter keep a bottle of giggle medicine for us gals. An' it was nasty tastin'

stuff, too. She made us take a gre't spoonful if we laffed at table, or after we gotter bed nights. There was jala inter it, I b'lieve. I guess I could make ye some."

Jess stopped laughing in a hurry. Laura tried to ignore her chum's indignant look; but it was quite plain that Lizzie Bean "had all her wits about her," as the saying is.

"Then you can cook?" Laura observed.

"Well, I can boil water without burnin' it," declared the odd girl.

"But I ain't no Woodruff-Wisteria chef." Afterward the chums figured it out that Liz meant "Waldorf-Astoria."

"Do you think you would like to go with us?" Laura asked.

"I dunno yet. Where is it?"

Laura explained more fully about the camping site, how they were to get there, and other particulars of the project.

"It listens good," Liz said, reflectively. "Though I ain't never cooked nothin' but soft-soap over a campfire."

"Oh! there will be a portable stove," Laura said.