The Girl Scouts at Camp Comalong; Or, Peg of Tamarack Hills

by Lilian Garis

  CHAPTER IX

  A DAY WITH THE BOBBIES

  A shrill whistle shocked the girls back to consciousness.

  "What's that?" asked Cleo.

  "Our 'get-up' call," replied Corene. "Mackey's whistle. At the bigcamp we always heard the bugles next."

  Whether woodnymphs were listening in that tent, or whether Corene'sremark provoked an uncanny echo, at that very moment a bugle blastsounded somewhere!

  "Another serenade!" exclaimed Julia, settling into her new comfort,quite as if the bugle-blow were permission to defer rising time.

  Miss Mackey was already dressed for the ten minute exercise drill."The girls at Norm have no bugles, so we cannot be indebted to themthis time," she said.

  "Maybe it's friend cow bringing back my shoe," chuckled Cleo.

  Came the uncertain notes of the bugle again:

  "We can't get 'em up--up--up!" it stuttered frantically, unable toreturn to the first notes to repeat the strain.

  The girls shuffled into slippers and bathrobes, the regular drillcostumes, and Grace ventured to poke her head outside the tent.

  "The boys!" she exclaimed. "There they go scamping off. Just gave usour first call, to tease, of course. Well, I'm glad something gotBenny up. I wouldn't wonder if the bugler blew him out first."

  "They're gone," repeated Miss Mackin good-naturedly, "and I supposethey think it was a great joke. Grace, couldn't we borrow that bugle?"

  "I'll see; I think Clee could blow it; she does so well with a bicyclepump."

  Presently the Bobbies were outside; having reverently raised theircolors, they raced off to the "drill field," a little place cleared ofbrush and safe from the eyes even of Benny's bugle squad. There, inbathing suits, they went through the setting up exercises, warrantedto do everything in the way of providing health and beauty for GirlScouts.

  From that they raced off to the little cove in the lake, took a dip,which they would loved to have prolonged into a swim had Mackey notblown that police whistle; then back to camp, then washed and dressedand jumped out to their benches set around the new boarded table.

  Washing between the trees, where twin cedars or other saplings wereused to hold the basin bench, proved novel to those little girls, usedto the white enamelled bathrooms at home; but it was fun, even ifJulia did spill "every drop of the pitcher full of fresh water" andhave to borrow from Margaret; and although Grace found her soap soslippery, it would roll off into the pine needles and when rescuedlook like a new sort of fuzzy-wuzzy chestnut. Altogether it was funand frolic, and "good for what ails you," as Cleo commented, whenMadaline took to preaching about the wrongs of civilization.

  "It's all nonsense and mummy says so, for us to want hot and coldwater all the time," she declaimed from her perch on a stump where thetowel was clear of the ground. "And this is good for us. Will make----"

  "Men of us," finished Cleo, who always loved to tease chubby, babyMadaline.

  Corene had charge of breakfast, Julia was fireman, this picturesqueduty appealing to her imaginative nature, and as she poked the embersin the stone furnace (of her own building) and sang, "Boil and bubble,toil and trouble," she must have imagined the witches in Macbeth werestirring things up with their forked wands.

  "Hungry! I'm starved!" declared Margaret. "Can't seem to remember whenI ate last. Please send me down that dish of apples."

  "Let us adhere to something of our regular table manners, girls," saidMiss Mackin from her place at the head of the board. "We don't wantthe home folk to be blaming us for lost manners, when we go back. Iknow it does seem like fun to be free from most restrictions, buthabits are so easily formed, and we can't blame the home people forwanting us to go back to them better in every way." Miss Mackin neverdictated, she just "put things up to the girls" in a very pleasantmanner.

  Corene was serving the cereal while Julia kept things hot over thepicturesque stone furnace.

  "If you have enough cooked now we will all eat together, Corey," saidthe director. "Just bring your coffee pot over here. I'll pour!" Shesmiled broadly at that use of the social term.

  "Let me cook the bacon," begged Cleo. "I've heard daddy talk so oftenof camp bacon." Her request was granted, and presently the bacon wassizzling from its wire string that ran from one end to the other ofthe furnace, each end being hooked on the iron poles, little gas pipesset up in the stones, with homemade hooks of tightly wound wire, theentire contrivance representing Julia's idea of a camp "skillet" or"dangling spider."

  The bacon broiled very quickly, for the embers had reached a point ofconcentrated heat, and when Cleo forked her bacon off the wire itsaroma might easily have attracted envious comments from the girls atCamp Norm.

  "Did anything ever taste so good?" exclaimed Margaret.

  "Shall we have baked potatoes for lunch?" asked Madaline, sending hercup down to Louise to have it refilled with milk.

  "I'm to cook lunch," replied Cleo, "and you may help, Madie. I knowyou always did love to bake things. Remember the day you burned thebig angel cake?"

  Madie remembered, but claimed a broader knowledge of the culinary artnow.

  The day's programme provided something for every hour, and afterbreakfast it was to be a swim. The weather was ideal for this, theirfirst experience in the "wide open," so that a swim was eagerlyanticipated now.

  "Fix your bunks; inspection first, you know," ordered the leader.

  How jolly it was! And how worth while to do things this way, which wasthe right way for this particular occasion?

  The beds and their surroundings passed the director's inspection, andthen came the swim.

  "We are all good swimmers," Julia insisted. "I don't really think weneed have Mackey with us, if she should want to do something else."

  "Oh, I go with you," replied Mackey. "The water is a matter ofparticular responsibility, and being good swimmers would not excuse mein case of accident."

  "Mother always feels that way and insists on being along with us,"added Louise reflectively.

  The dock was crowded when they reached the "bathing grounds." Theymight have "gone in" at their own beach in the cove, but the rocksaround that corner were jagged, and Mackey decided it would be betterto take the dives from the regular springboard off the landing.

  "I wish we would see Peg," Grace said to Cleo. "I wonder where shegoes in?"

  "Never saw her in a bathing suit," replied Cleo, "but I'm sure she's aregular fish in the water. We'll ask her to come with us next time wesee her."

  "Do you suppose she works at anything?" Grace asked again.

  "Why! How queer that you should think she works?" charged Cleo.

  "Well, she does something. She wouldn't ride away so early everymorning just for pleasure; and Benny says he has seen her so often."

  A call to line up for a running dive interrupted the conversation, andpresently the Bobbies quite forgot Peg, in their joy of a real swim inLake Hocomo.

  "Lots better than the ocean," chugged Louise, just coming in from along pull. "I never could try this stroke in the big waves," and shedove back again to try the "crawl" in the smooth yet pleasantly warmedwaters; for the lake was never very cold at the big open basin thatsurrounded this point.

  "And no tide to worry about," added Margaret.

  However dear was the ocean when at the ocean they tarried, the Scoutshad a happy faculty of shifting their affection, and now it was the"wonderful lake!"

  Miss Mackin was watching the swimmers and she quickly observed thosemost proficient.

  "Madaline, don't go outside the float," she cautioned. "That's apretty good swim for a little girl, I think."

  The smallest Bobbie turned to obey when those nearest her saw her givea sudden jerk and then she screamed!

  "Oh, something has got me! Quick!"

  Miss Mackin only had to put her hand out to reach the frightenedchild, but Madaline's face showed pain and the director could not atonce seem to assist her.

  "My foot! Something's got my foot!" she cried.

 
; "A crab!" exclaimed Grace, swimming quickly to Madaline's aid.

  "Not in the lake!" protested Cleo.

  By this time Miss Mackin had succeeded in freeing the very muchfrightened little Scout, and she was now leading her ashore. Madalinehad drawn her foot between two rocks that came together so closelythey formed a very formidable trap, and the only way a victim couldget out was to back out of the wider end of the opening. There wererocks only on the lake bottom near shore, and most bathers soon becamefamiliar with their location.

  As if that trifling incident opened the way for further "frowns ofFate" the girls in the water presently had reason to scamper.

  The criticized blondes, they who ran the "Bug," that deformed motorboat, now deliberately turned the craft into the line of the swimmers.At first it seemed accidental, but when Grace and Julia turned inanother direction and the "Bug" cut after them, they realized that thegirls in the hideous striped bathing suits were giving them a chase.

  Miss Mackin saw this from ashore and ran along the dock to the end ofthe pier. She called from there, and the girls in the queer squat boatseemed to take heed, for presently the boat made a complete circle andshot out again into the open lake.

  "Come in, girls," called the director. "Time's up!"

  "Oh, not one more swim?" begged Grace. But Corene said "no," andeveryone realized Corene's experience with a director qualified her todictate, so reluctantly they waded in and were soon back in camp,dressing for dinner.

  "What do you think of those girls racing after us with their old motorboat?" Louise asked. They were looking rosy and feeling "frisky" aftertheir swim, and the preparations for dinner (they had decided to havethe main meal at noon), were aggravating in their appetizing lure.

  "I think," replied Julia, "we will have to look out for those ladies,"she wanted to say something more "descriptive," but let it go at"ladies."

  "Why look out for them?" pressed Grace. She may have scented dangerand "warmed to it," for Grace had the reputation of daring andcourage.

  "Well, they didn't seem to be 'cutting up' exactly, and they did steertheir old bug-boat straight after us," reasoned Julia. "Wonder wherethey stop?"

  "I saw them on the grounds of the Fayette the other day," saidMadaline, "and one was in a hammock, with her feet sticking out andyou could see her green silk stockings all the way from the corner."

  "Must have terrible long----" The dinner gong interrupted Grace'ssentence, for Corene was hammering her bread knife on the big tin traywith such startling results, that the very birds took fright and leftthe grounds before gathering the crumbs that might come to them fromthe table of the Bobbies.