The Outdoor Girls of Deepdale Or, camping and tramping for fun and health

Excerpt

CHAPTER I

A FLUTTERING PAPER

Four girls were walking down an elm-shaded street. Four girls, walking two by two, their arms waist-encircling, their voices mingling in rapid talk, punctuated with rippling laughter—and, now and then, as their happy spirits fairly bubbled and overflowed, breaking into a few waltz steps to the melody of a dreamy song hummed by one of their number. The sun, shining through the trees, cast patches of golden light on the stone sidewalk, and, as the girls passed from sunshine to shadow, they made a bright, and sometimes a dimmer, picture on the street, whereon were other groups of maidens. For school was out.

"Betty Nelson, the idea is perfectly splendid!" exclaimed the tallest of the quartette; a stately, fair girl with wonderful braids of hair on which the sunshine seemed to like to linger.

"And it will be such a relief from the ordinary way of doing things," added the companion of the one who thus paid a compliment to her chum just in advance of her. "I detest monotony!"

"If only too many things don't happen to us!" This somewhat timid observation came from the quietest of the four—she who was walking with the one addressed as Betty.

"Why, Amy Stonington!" cried the girl who had first spoken, as she tossed her head to get a rebellious lock of hair out of her dark eyes. "The very idea! We want things to happen; don't we, Betty?" and she caught the arm of one who seemed to be the leader, and whirled her about to look into her face. "Answer me!" she commanded. "Don't we?"

Betty smiled slightly, revealing her white, even teeth. Then she said laughingly, and the laugh seemed to illuminate her countenance:

"I guess Grace meant certain kinds of happenings; didn't you, Grace?"

"Of course," and the rather willowy creature, whose style of dress artistically accentuated her figure, caught a pencil that was slipping from a book, and thrust it into the mass of light hair that was like a crown to her beauty.

"Oh, that's all right, then," and Amy, who had interposed the objection, looked relieved. She was a rather quiet girl, of the character called "sweet" by her intimates; and truly she had the disposition that merited the word.

"When can we start?" asked Grace Ford. Then, before an answer could be given, she added: "Don't let's go so fast. We aren't out to make a walking record to-day. Let's stop here in the shade a moment."

The four came to a halt beneath a great horsechestnut tree, that gave welcome relief from the sun, which, though it was only May, still had much of the advance hint of summer in it. There was a carriage block near the curb, and Grace "draped herself artistically about it," as Mollie Billette expressed it.

"If you're tired now, what will you be if we walk five or six miles a day?" asked Betty with a smile. "Or even more, perhaps."

"Oh, I can if I have to—but I don't have to now. Come, Betty, tell us when we are to start."

"Why, we can't decide now. Are you so anxious all of a sudden?" and Betty pulled down and straightened the blue middy blouse that had been rumpled by her energetic chums....