"When ye goin'?" asked the girl.

"Day after to-morrow."

"What'll ye pay?" was the next bluntly put question.

Laura told her the weekly wage Mrs. Pendleton had guaranteed. Although Lizzie Bean's face was well nigh expressionless at all times, the girls saw at once that something was wrong.

"I dunno," said Liz, slowly. "I have worked mighty cheap in my life--and I ain't got no job when I leave here--an' I gotter eat. But that _does_ seem a _naw_-ful little wages."

"Why! I think that is real liberal," declared Jess, with some warmth.

Liz eyed her again coldly. "You must ha' worked awful cheap in your life," she said.

"I know," Laura explained, quietly, laying an admonitory hand upon her chum's arm, "You know, that is what you will receive each week."

"What's _that_?" demanded Liz, with a jump, "Say that again, will ye?"

"We will pay you that sum weekly," repeated Laura.

"Say--say it by the month!" gasped the lean girl, her eyes showing more surprise than Laura had thought them capable of betraying.

Laura did as she was requested. A slow, faint grin dawned on Liz Bean's narrow countenance.

"I been useter gittin' paid by the month--and sometimes not _then_.

Some ladies has paid me so little for helpin' them that I wisht they'd paid me only every _three_ months, so's 'twould sound bigger!

"I gotter take ye up before somebody pinches me."

"Pinches you? What do you mean?" asked Jess, doubtfully.

"I don't want to wake up," declared Liz. "I never got so much money since I was turned adrift when my a'nt died. Don't _you_ wake up, neither, and forgit to pay me!"

"I promise not to do that," laughed Laura. "Then you'll come with us?"

"If I don't break an arm," declared Lizzie Bean, with emphasis.

They told her how to meet them at the dock, and the hour they expected to start. "And bring your oldest clothes," warned Jess.

"What's that?" demanded Liz.

"We just about live in old clothes--or in a bathing suit--in camp,"

explained Laura.

"Bless your heart!" exclaimed Liz. "I ain't never had nothin' but old clo'es. Been wearin' hand-me-downs ever since I can remember."

"My goodness gracious!" said Jess, and she and Laura hurried off for school. "Did you ever see such an uncouth creature? I don't wonder Billy Long says she's cracked."

"I don't know about her being cracked, as you call it," laughed Laura.

"Just because she's queer is no proof that she is an imbecile. You know the old parody on 'Lives of Great Men All Remind Us,' don't you?"

and she went on to quote:

"'Lives of imbeciles remind us It may some day come to pa.s.s, We shall see one staring at us From our trusty looking-gla.s.s!'"

"Shucks!" responded Jess. "You'll get to be as bad as Bobby Hargrew with those old wheezes. But, did you _ever_ see such a girl before?"

"No," admitted Laura. "I honestly never did. But I am quite sure she is in the possession of all her senses----"

"She may be; but I bet her senses are not like other folks'," chuckled Jess.

"She surely won't _bite_, Jess," responded Laura, smiling.

"Hope not! 'Boil water without burning it!' What do you know about _that_?"

"I think it's funny," said Laura.

"Well! I only hope we get something to eat in camp," murmured Jess.

"We can't expect her to do all the cooking," Laura said. "And I shall tell the girls so."

"Goodness! I don't know whether I want to go camping with this bunch, after all," said Jess. "What some of them will do to the victuals they have to cook will be a shame!"

However, the prospect of indifferent cookery made none of the girls of Central High less enthusiastic in the matter of the preparations for camping out on Acorn Island, in the middle of Lake Dunkirk.

They were all as busy as bees the next day, packing their bags and flying about from house to house, asking each other: "What you going to take?"

"Goodness me!" cried Laura, at last; "it isn't what do we _want_, but how little can we get along with! Discard everything possible, girls--do!"

Bobby Hargrew declared Lil Pendleton had started to pack a Saratoga trunk, and that she had been obliged to point out to Lil that neither of the motorboats was large enough to ship such a piece of baggage.

Their gymnasium suits would be just the thing in camp. And of course they all had bathing suits. Otherwise most of the girls got their apparel down to what Jess Morse called "an insignificant minority."

"If the King of India, or the Duke and d.u.c.h.ess of Doosenberry, comes calling at our camp, we shall have to put up a scarlet fever sign and all go to bed," said Bobby. "We'll have nothing to receive them in."

"But not Purt Sweet," chuckled Billy Long. "Purt's packed a dinner jacket and a pair of spats. How much other fancy raiment he proposes to spring on us the deponent knoweth not. He'll be just a scream in the woods."

"He asked me if there were many dangerous characters lurking in the woods around Lake Dunkirk," chuckled Lance. "Somebody has been stringing him about outlaws."

"Short and Long looks guilty," said Chet, suspiciously. "What you been stuffin' Purt with, Billy?"

Billy Long, who straddled the piazza rail, swinging his feet, showed his teeth in a broad smile. "You read about that Halliday fellow, didn't you?" he asked.

"Oh! the chap they say stole the money from that Albany bank?"

responded Lance.

"It was securities he stole--and forged people's names to them so as to get money," said Laura. "The Lockwood girls' Aunt Dora lost some money by him."

"That is--if he did it," said Chet, doubtfully.

"Well, the newspapers say so," Jess observed.