The Motor Maids at Sunrise Camp.

by Katherine Stokes.

CHAPTER I.

OFF FOR THE MOUNTAINS.

"Sunrise Camp! What next, pray tell me?" sighed Miss Helen Campbell.

"But it doesn't mean getting up at sunrise, Cousin Helen," Billie Campbell a.s.sured her. "Although Papa says we would like it, once we got started. Campers always do rise with the sun. It's the proper thing to do."

"But why do they give it that uncivilized name?" continued Miss Campbell in an injured tone of voice. "Why not Sunset Camp or Meridian Camp or even Moonrise Camp? There is nothing restful to me in the name of 'Sunrise.'"

"It will be restful, indeed it will, dear cousin, once you are used to the life, and it couldn't be called any of those other names because they would not be appropriate. You see there is a wonderful view of the sunrise from the camp, and every morning if you wake early enough you see a beautiful pink light all over the sky and you wonder where the sun is; and suddenly he comes shooting up from behind the tallest mountain in the range across the valley, and it's really quite late by then. He has been up ever so long, but he's been hiding behind the mountains."

"And we are to sleep on the ground under those flimsy tents, I suppose?"

asked Miss Campbell, who was not taking very kindly to the camping proposition.

"No, no," protested her young cousin, laughing, "you're thinking of soldiers, and they do have cots. This camp is a log house, a really beautiful log house. There is one immense room without any ceiling, and you look straight up through the beams into the roof. Papa says it's splendid."

Miss Campbell bestowed upon Billie a tolerant, suffering smile.

"And back of that room," continued Billie, speaking quickly, "is a long sleeping porch that can be part.i.tioned off into bedrooms----"

"No protection from rain and wild animals, I suppose?" put in Miss Campbell sadly.

"Oh, yes. There is a roof overhead and a floor underneath, and it's all enclosed with wire netting to keep out mosquitoes. It can't rain in far enough to wet the beds and, of course, nothing else matters----"

"Clothes?" groaned the little lady.

"But khaki skirts, cousin, and rubber-soled shoes and pongee blouses,--water couldn't injure things like that."

"I went camping once forty years ago," went on Miss Campbell, without seeming to notice Billie's reply. "It was terrible, I a.s.sure you, it was quite too dreadful. One night there was a storm, and the tents that were not blown away by the high winds were swamped by rain. Our clothes all mildewed, and the flies! I shall never forget the disgusting flies,--they were everywhere."

"This camp couldn't possibly be blown away even by the strongest wind,"

broke in Billie, ready to refute every argument, "and the screens make it just as comfortable as your own home would be."

"How far is it from anywhere?" demanded Miss Campbell suddenly.

Billie hesitated.

"It's twenty-five miles, but there is a good road from the railroad station and the 'Comet' can take us across in no time. You see, there is a little village in the valley at the foot of our mountain, and in summer a 'bus runs twice a day with pa.s.sengers and the mail, so the road must be fairly good. Papa says lots of automobiles go over it."

"Twenty-five miles," groaned Miss Campbell.

"Twenty-five miles from a telegraph station----"

"But there is no one for you to telegraph to if Papa and I are with you, dear Cousin, is there?" asked Billie ingenuously.

Miss Campbell's expression softened. Nothing pleased her so much as for Billie to make one family of the three. The young cousin had become such a fixture in her home that she had grown quite jealous of Duncan Campbell's possessive airs with his daughter.

"One would think she really belonged to him more than to me," she would exclaim at such times, with some unreasonableness it must be admitted.

But it was plain that the little spinster's resolutions against camping were beginning to crumble.

"We are not to eat on the ground, then, or drink coffee from tin cups, or sleep in our clothes, or be bitten to death by mosquitoes, and finally exterminated by wild animals?"

Billie laughed joyously. She knew by these extravagant remarks that her cousin had been won over.

"None of those things," she cried. "We are to lead a comfortable, beautiful rustic life, and I know you'll just love it. There are lakes, cousin, exquisite, beautiful little gems of lakes; and trails all through the pine forests, and the walking isn't a bit difficult----"

"Khaki skirts, did you say?"

"Yes, and sneakers."

"What are they, child?"

"Rubber-soled shoes to keep you from slipping."

Miss Campbell sighed.

"And at my age!" she said aloud, answering some unspoken thought. "Tell your father I accept, but it's the last straw, and I may never see my comfortable old home again."

Billie did not pause to disprove this dejected statement. She kissed her relative with the wild abandon of eighteen, rushed from the room and was down the stairs in a breathlessly short s.p.a.ce of time.

"She's going! She's going!" she cried, rushing into the drawing-room, where her three friends were anxiously awaiting news, and Mr. Campbell, almost as anxious himself, was pacing the floor, his hands thrust deep into his pockets.

"Good work, little daughter!" he said, pausing in his walk. "I knew you could win her over if anybody could, although last night I was afraid we hadn't the ghost of a show. She was dead set against it. The word 'camp'

alone seemed to make her wild."

"But, you see, she thought it was tents and flies and mosquitoes and tin cups."

Mr. Campbell smiled.

"I think we won't tell her any more, now that she has made up her mind.

We'll give her a little surprise. Call the camp a log hut and let it go at that."

"Now, about clothes----" began Nancy Brown, and her friends all smiled.

"Well, one must have clothes, even on a camping trip. Don't you think a blue corduroy would be attractive, with a touch of coral pink in the silk tie, say; and high russet walking boots--the kind that lace, you know----"

"They must have rubber soles," put in Billie, "no matter what the tops are."

"And a straw hat in the natural color, with a brim that droops slightly, and a pheasant's tail feather, slightly at one side----"

There was another burst of laughter at this juncture, and Mr. Campbell joined in.

"Miss Nancy," he said, "I'm afraid you'll have everything from hedge hogs to wood choppers at your feet if you make yourself so attractive in silks and velvets and russets----"