The Girls of Central High in Camp Or, the Old Professor's Secret

Excerpt

CHAPTER I

WHERE, OH, WHERE?

Field day was past and gone and the senior class of Central High, Centerport’s largest and most popular school, was thinking of little but white dresses, bouquets, and blue-ribboned diplomas.

The group of juniors, however, who had made the school’s athletic record for the year in the Girls’ Branch Athletic League, had other matters to discuss—and in their opinion they were matters of much greater moment.

“Boiled down,” stated Bobby Hargrew, “to its last common divisor, it is ‘Where, oh, where shall we spend our vacation?’”

They had decided some weeks before—Bobby herself, Laura Belding, Jess Morse, the Lockwood twins and Dr. Agnew’s daughter, Nellie—that a portion at least of the long summer vacation should be spent in camp. The mooted question was, where?

“No seashore resort,” Nellie said, with more decision than she usually displayed, for Nellie was of a timid and peaceful disposition.

“No,” agreed Laura Belding. “We’ll eschew the three S’s—‘sun, sand, and ’skeeter-bites.’ That is the slogan of the seashore resort. Besides, it costs too much to get there.”

“That’s an important item to take into consideration, girls, if I’m to go,” said Jess Morse.

“I thought you were a millionairess?” laughed Bobby. “Where are the royalties from your play?”

“Those won’t begin till the producer puts the play on next season,” returned Jess, who had been fortunate in writing a play for amateur production good enough to interest a professional theatrical manager.

“Well, we’ve got to have you, Jess,” said Bobby (otherwise Clara) Hargrew. “For we’re depending upon your mother to play chaperon for the crowd, wherever we go.”

“Let’s find a quiet spot, then,” said Jess, eagerly. “Mother wants to write a book this summer and she says she would love to be somewhere where she doesn’t need to play the society game, or dress––”

“Back to the Garden of Eden for hers!” chuckled Bobby. “Eve didn’t have to dress—that is, not before Fall.”

“Aren’t you awful, Bobby?” cried one of the Lockwood twins—but which one it was who spoke could not have been sworn to by their most familiar friend. Dora and Dorothy looked just alike, dressed just alike, their voices were alike, and they usually acted in perfect harmony, too!

“Well,” pursued Laura Belding, “if we are going to spend the first weeks of the summer vacation in camp, we must decide upon the spot at once. Are we all agreed that we shall not go to the salt water?”

“Oh, yes!” cried her particular chum, Jess, or Josephine, Morse.

“None of the troubles of the seaside boarder for ours,” Bobby announced, hurriedly groping amid the rubbish in her skirt pocket and bringing forth a crumpled newspaper clipping. Bobby insisted upon having a pocket in almost every garment she wore (it was whispered that she wore pajamas at night for that reason) and no boy ever carried a more heterogeneous collection in his pockets than she did....