Katherine Stokes

“ In the meanwhile, Miss Helen Campbell snipped up his shirt sleeve with a pair of small scissors and Billie, overwhelmed with contrition, stood ready to bathe the wound, which was more bloody than serious.
“I call this pretty nice,” remarked Richard, glancing at the circle of anxious faces leaning over him. “It’s worth being shot to have so many ministering angels about one; and a Seraph with a flaming sword at the foot of my couch to guard me,” he added, glancing again at Phoebe, now holding a lamp high with a perfectly steady arm, so that the others could see to work. ”

“ With the exception of her three best friends, Billie Campbell had never met people who pleased her so much on short acquaintance as the Hooks and their guest. It had not taken them half an hour to bridge over the gap of unfamiliarity.
“What is it?” she asked of Maggie Hook, Richard’s small, whimsical sister, black haired, black eyed, with quick alert movements like a bird’s.
“I can tell you exactly the reason,” replied Maggie. “It’s because we all belong to the road. There is a bond between us. ”

“ When people are lost, really and unquestionably lost, their true natures rise to the surface: if there is any selfishness hidden away, it develops into complainings and reproaches; the faint-hearted make unhappy predictions; the lazy ones get tired before they have any right to. Ben had always admired the Motor Maids, but never more than now when he saw them quiet and courageous in the face of a night in the swamp. Nancy might shriek over hornets and snakes, but she would never confess to being tired or frightened. ”

“ Alberdina’s supper was distinctly German in flavor, but it was good and Billie and Nancy enjoyed freedom from the bondage of cooking the evening meal. After supper the wind freshened and it grew much cooler.
“It’s going to be a dark night. There’s no moon,” remarked Ben, wistfully. “Shall I light the camp fire? And then we can sit around and tell stories and sing songs,” and because no one either assented or objected, owing to the peculiar restlessness that possessed them, he put a match to the pile of logs and presently the clearing was illuminated. ”

“ There is a clothes boiler, and goodness knows the things need it, and a good bleaching afterwards in the sun. They are as yellow as gold.”
When Alberdina, the new German-Swiss maid, had alighted from the train with her absurd little iron-bound trunk, about as big as a bread basket, Billie had felt no misgivings. Here, indeed, was a creature too healthy to know the name of fear, and too good-natured to object to hard work. The brilliant red cheeks and broad engaging smile immediately decided Billie to put all her accumulated linen in wash at once. ”

“ They found the van dark and quiet. Evidently the girls had heard nothing of the rumpus on the mountain and had felt no uneasiness about Richard, who was accustomed to taking strolls at untimely hours.
It did not take long to bring the motor car back to camp and before midnight a peaceful calm had settled over the log hut.
Phoebe, stretched on her cot in the living room, lay staring up into the darkness of the unceiled roof. She tried to think of her father somewhere out on the mountain, but always her thoughts reverted to the new young man with the kind, smiling eyes. ”

“ There was Percy in the act of killing a long black snake, which was curled up with head thrust out in an attitude of defence, and there was Nancy, who had evidently started to run and, missing the trail, had rushed into a tall clump of bramble bushes. The brambles had wrapped themselves about her like the tentacles of an octopus, and the jaunty feather was caught in an overhanging branch.
“Don’t kill the snake, Percy,” objected Ben. “There are lots more just like him, and it won’t help any to kill one. Besides, they never start a quarrel.” ”

“ The hamper of luncheon was strapped on behind, and underneath the middle seats in a pan of ice were bottles of root beer and ginger ale. Presently he started down the steep road with his load. The rustic camp, perched on the ledge in the side of the mountain, with its guard of pine trees crowding almost to its doors, never looked more alluring.
“I declare I hate to leave the place,” said Miss Campbell, peeping through the glass window in the back curtain of the car. ”

“ I could never make a living as a scullery maid. It’s a dog’s life. Elinor and Mary make up our cots and keep things tidy. It is really and truly camping now, and such a relief not to have those Lupos. But there is trouble about the laundry. Nobody in these high places will stoop to wash clothes. If you could send us up a strong, fearless girl, it doesn’t matter how little she knows, it would be fine. We want her strong to scour pans and wash clothes, and fearless enough to be left at the camp alone when we all go off in the ‘Comet’ on a picnic.
“The mountain girl who saved us is named Phoebe. ”

“ After the young people had departed on the morning of that eventful day, Miss Helen Campbell settled herself in a hammock on the upper porch with a novel and two new magazines. She loved the “children,” as she called them, and the sound of their voices and laughter was as music to her ears, but occasionally she enjoyed a peaceful morning to herself without any chatter to disturb her quietude. ”

“ Lupo rarely replied to any question addressed to her, but she went about getting the things for the lunch and Billie breathed a sigh of silent thanks.
“It’s really terrible to be a slave to one’s cook,” she thought. “But I know perfectly well that if I ever tried to subjugate Mrs. Lupo I’d get mad, and she would just fold her tent like the Arab and silently steal away, and one morning there would be no breakfast.” ”

“ Time enough to break the news after they have eaten their mock turtle.”
“Duck,” choked Percy.
But the Gypsy cooks had noticed nothing. They were too absorbed with straining the beans and the onions now cooked to shreds, from the adamantine potatoes. The cooked vegetables they arranged in the bottom of a large meat platter as a becoming bed for the mock duck which Billie, with mingled feelings of fear and triumph, now prepared to loose from his fastenings with a long fork and the historic carving knife. But Mock Duck to the end was a rogue and a trickster. ”

“ Men like gentleness in a woman. A violent-tempered wife never keeps her husband’s love. If you were gentle and quiet, your husband would take you with him to the village. But you are jealous and uncontrolled. You make a spectacle of yourself and of him. You look very ugly as you looked a while ago, like an angry animal instead of a handsome young woman. Try being gentle and always looking pretty and see how it works.”
Mrs. Lupo looked up. Miss Campbell had captured her interest and she was listening to that sage spinster’s advice with entire attention. ”

“ Lupo was a law unto herself. For one thing, the blackberries that Billie had purchased of the mountain girl had never come to the table, although the girls kept looking for them to appear in the form of a cobbler or a roly-poly pudding. What had become of them they never learned, but Billie had an uncomfortable suspicion that they had been tossed into the garbage pail.
“We can’t do anything about it, my dear,” Miss Campbell had informed Billie. “The woman certainly holds us in the hollow of her hand unless we want to do our own cooking.” ”

“ He wouldn’t harm even one tree. How cruel these people are! Always they have hated us and we have never injured any of them. Oh, Billie, I feel that I must go to my father. I know he needs me.”
“You remember the doctor’s message,” answered Billie; “that it would be dangerous for you to leave camp. I am certain he knew what he was saying. Besides, didn’t you say the old herb woman was a friend? She would not have deceived you, would she?”
“No,” answered Phoebe, half smiling. “Once I pulled a thorn out of old Granny’s foot and washed and bound it, and she has been good to me ever since. ”

“ Where he had learned these arts his daughter never knew, but she imagined from an old Indian who had lived in the little cabin in the early days and had died when Phoebe was still quite small. As far as a man may be sane whose memory extends back only some eighteen years and who has only one illusion, Phoebe’s father was sane. ”

“ We go Gypsying in our van and you go Gypsying in your car. We be all of one blood like Kipling’s Mowgli and the animals in the jungle.”
“Only we aren’t the real thing as much as 178you,” said Billie modestly. “The ‘Comet’ is a dear old thing, but he’s not a house.”
“You wouldn’t enjoy it if he were,” said Maggie. “A motor traveling van would never do. You see the point of this kind of life is that it’s lazy and contemplative. We just amble along and it doesn’t matter whether we make ten miles or five. ”

“ Billie and the doctor were indeed in something of a quandary as to what to do about Phoebe’s father. It was evident from further inquiry that the tide of general opinion had been turned against Crazy Frenchy; not one soul could be interested in the search for him, not even after an offer of liberal pay.
“He ain’t no good anyhow,” one man said. “He and his daughter holds themselves above common people even when they don’t have enough to keep body and soul together. They lives on property that ain’t theirs by rights, and they don’t belong in this section of the country. ”

“ Somehow Sunrise Camp and Alberdina Schoenbachler faded into the dim recesses of their memories.
“Of course you can’t go home,” Richard Hook remarked to Billie. “We’ll camp out to-night. You’ll never be able to mend that car in all this blackness, and it would be a pretty hard road to follow at night anyhow. We’ve just come over it. Dobbin can pull the car over to one side of the road, and Miss Campbell and Miss Price can sleep in the van.”
“And we’ll show you what a bed really is,” Ben went on eagerly. “Not a motor car cushion affair either.” ”