The Meadow-Brook Girls Under Canvas

Excerpt

CRAZY JANE'S WILD DRIVE

"Tommy, what are you doing?" demanded Margery Brown, shaking back a lock of unruly hair from her flushed face.

"Conthulting the Oracle," lisped Grace Thompson, more familiarly known among her friends as Tommy.

"I should think you would prefer to cool off in the shade after that climb up the hill. I'm perishing. If you knew what sight you are you'd come in out of the sun, wouldn't she, Hazel?"

Hazel Holland regarded Margery solemnly.

"You are a sight yourself, Buster. Your face is as red as a beet. I wish you might see yourself in a looking glass."

Buster tossed her head disdainfully. "I'm not a sight," she declared.

"I'll leave it to Tommy if your face isn't positively crimson." But Tommy was too fully absorbed in her present occupation to give heed to the remark. "I'm sorry Harriet isn't here," continued Hazel, seeing that Tommy had not heard her.

"Why isn't she here?" asked Margery.

"Harriet is helping her mother," replied Hazel. "She always has something to do at home. She is a much better girl than either you or I, Buster. Harriet is always thinking of others instead of herself."

"Well, she's older. She is sixteen and I am only fourteen. By the time I'm her age I will settle down, too," declared Margery wisely.

"Wearing spectacles and darning socks," smiled Hazel.

Margery shook her head vehemently.

"Wouldn't it be awful!" she queried.

"Oh, I am not so sure of that," replied Hazel. "I like to keep house. Every girl ought to know all about housekeeping. Do you know how to cook?"

"No. I don't want to know either, not even plain cooking," retorted Margery. "Plain cooking may be all right for plain people, but——"

"Buster!" rebuked Hazel. "I am amazed to hear you talk that way. That is like Crazy Jane. You don't want to be called another 'Crazy Jane,' do you? You will be if you persist in saying such silly things."

"Why don't you lecture Tommy?" demanded Margery, her eyes snapping threateningly. "Tommy doesn't know a biscuit from an apple dumpling until she gets it in her mouth."

"Tommy, please come in out of the heat," begged Hazel. "What are you doing out there?"

"Telling my fortune," answered Tommy without raising her head from her task. Hazel observed that Tommy was pulling a daisy apart. A heap of daisies that she had pulled up by the roots, lay in her lap, regardless of the dirt that was accumulating on her stiffly starched white dress. One by one Tommy pulled the daisy petals from the flower, muttering rhythmically to herself.

"Consulting the Oracle," sniffed Buster. "Did you ever hear of anything so silly?"

"We all do silly things," answered Hazel wisely.

"I go, I thtay; I go, I thtay; I go, I thtay; I go—Oh!" Tommy glanced up with an expression of disgust on her face.

"Didn't it come out to suit you?" smiled Hazel Holland.

"No," pouted Tommy, screwing up her small face. When animated, Grace's was an impish face, made more so by the upward tilt of a much freckled nose.

"Go where?" I questioned Margery, now evincing a mild interest in Tommy's affairs....