Dorothy Dale's Camping Days

Excerpt

CHAPTER I

OUT OF A HAYRICK

"Oh, my!" exclaimed one girl.

"Oh, mine!" amended another.

"Oh, ours!" called out a third.

Then there was one awful bump, and the chorus was understood.

The old-style hay wagon, which was like a big crib, wobbled from side to side. The young ladies followed its questionable example, and some of them "sort of" lapped-over on the others.

"Dorothy Dale!" gasped one particularly sensitive member of the party, "we thought when you vouched for this affair that it would turn out all right!"

"But it hasn't turned out anything yet," replied Dorothy, "although we all came pretty near it—that time."

She clasped her hand around one of the braces of the hayrick, evidently determined that should she be "turned out" her arm would be responsible.

"That's just like you, Nita Brant," declared Tavia Travers, the latter really being manager of the occasion. "When I go to work, and hire a car like this, and especially stipulate that the ride shall be—rural—you kick on the bumps."

But scarcely had she uttered these words, when a "bump" came, with neither time nor opportunity for Nita's "kick." In fact, it was remarkable that the old hay wagon did not actually carry out its threat, to roll over in the direction toward which it wobbled.

"If you young ladies care to ride any farther," called out a man from the front of the wagon, "you better be still. I ain't put no corks in the holes in the bottom of this autymobile."

He chuckled at his own joke. The holes were only too apparent to the fair occupants of the hay wagon.

"Oh, it's all right, Sam," called back Tavia, "the only thin member of the party, who might by any chance fall through a hole, is dying from bumps, and we have a good hold on her. If you could see through the hay you would behold the human chain in action," and she gave Nita such a jerk that the latter declared the bumps were lovely, and begged to be allowed to do her own experimenting with them.

"He laughs best who laughs least," misquoted Dorothy, as the wagon continued to jog along. "I don't exactly like the—er—contour of the hill we are approaching."

"Why, that's the real thing in hills," declared Tavia. "I planned this road purposely to 'tobog' down that hill."

"I hope the old horses are hooked up securely," remarked Rose-Mary, whom the girls called Cologne. "I don't mind making a hill, but I hate to have the wagon make it in solo. I have had a try of that sort."

"Now say your prayers, Nita," ordered Tavia, "and don't forget to repent for snibbying my chocolates."

"Oh!" screamed Edna Black, alias Ned Ebony, "I do believe something is going to happen!"

"Sure thing," continued Tavia, in her joking way. "Do you suppose the girls from Glenwood ever go out without having 'something happen'?"

The old man was pulling at the reins, but his horses were starting to slide.

"Watch that fellow waltz," remarked Tavia. "Now, wouldn't he be great in a circus?"

The "waltzing horse" tried to sit down, but the farmer tugged at the lines, and otherwise objected to such conduct, and the unfortunate animal did its best to comply with the orders, which were now being flung at him, not only from the driver but from the girls in the wagon....