E-text prepared by Roger Frank
and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team
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“It will be restful, indeed it will, dear cousin, once you are used to the life, and it couldn’t be called any of those other names because they would not be appropriate. You see there is a wonderful view of the sunrise from the camp, and every morning if you wake early enough you see a beautiful pink light all over the sky and you wonder where the sun is; and suddenly he comes shooting up from behind the tallest mountain in the range across the valley, and it’s really quite late by then. He has been up ever so long, but he’s been hiding behind the mountains.”

“And we are to sleep on the ground under those flimsy tents, I suppose?” asked Miss Campbell, who was not taking very kindly to the camping proposition.

“No, no,” protested her young cousin, laughing, “you’re thinking of soldiers, and they do have cots. This camp is a log house, a really beautiful log house. There is one immense room without any ceiling, and you look straight up through the beams into the roof. Papa says it’s splendid.”

Miss Campbell bestowed upon Billie a tolerant, suffering smile.

“And back of that room,” continued Billie, speaking quickly, “is a long sleeping porch that can be partitioned off into bedrooms——”

“No protection from rain and wild animals, I suppose?” put in Miss Campbell sadly.

“Oh, yes. There is a roof overhead and a floor underneath, and it’s all enclosed with wire netting to keep out mosquitoes. It can’t rain in far enough to wet the beds and, of course, nothing else matters——”

“Clothes?” groaned the little lady.

“But khaki skirts, cousin, and rubber-soled shoes and pongee blouses,—water couldn’t injure things like that.”

“I went camping once forty years ago,” went on Miss Campbell, without seeming to notice Billie’s reply. “It was terrible, I assure you, it was quite too dreadful. One night there was a storm, and the tents that were not blown away by the high winds were swamped by rain. Our clothes all mildewed, and the flies! I shall never forget the disgusting flies,—they were everywhere.”

“This camp couldn’t possibly be blown away even by the strongest wind,” broke in Billie, ready to refute every argument, “and the screens make it just as comfortable as your own home would be.”

“How far is it from anywhere?” demanded Miss Campbell suddenly.

Billie hesitated.

“It’s twenty-five miles, but there is a good road from the railroad station and the ‘Comet’ can take us across in no time. You see, there is a little village in the valley at the foot of our mountain, and in summer a ’bus runs twice a day with passengers and the mail, so the road must be fairly good. Papa says lots of automobiles go over it.”

“Twenty-five miles,” groaned Miss Campbell.

“Twenty-five miles from a telegraph station——”

“But there is no one for you to telegraph to if Papa and I are with you, dear Cousin, is there?” asked Billie ingenuously.

Miss Campbell’s expression softened. Nothing pleased her so much as for Billie to make one family of the three. The young cousin had become such a fixture in her home that she had grown quite jealous of Duncan Campbell’s possessive airs with his daughter.

“One would think she really belonged to him more than to me,” she would exclaim at such times, with some unreasonableness it must be admitted.

But it was plain that the little spinster’s resolutions against camping were beginning to crumble.

“We are not to eat on the ground, then, or drink coffee from tin cups, or sleep in our clothes, or be bitten to death by mosquitoes, and finally exterminated by wild animals?”

Billie laughed joyously. She knew by these extravagant remarks that her cousin had been won over.

“None of those things,” she cried. “We are to lead a comfortable, beautiful rustic life, and I know you’ll just love it. There are lakes, cousin, exquisite, beautiful little gems of lakes; and trails all through the pine forests, and the walking isn’t a bit difficult——”

“Khaki skirts, did you say?”

“Yes, and sneakers.”

“What are they, child?”

“Rubber-soled shoes to keep you from slipping.”

Miss Campbell sighed.

“And at my age!” she said aloud, answering some unspoken thought. “Tell your father I accept, but it’s the last straw, and I may never see my comfortable old home again.”

Billie did not pause to disprove this dejected statement. She kissed her relative with the wild abandon of eighteen, rushed from the room and was down the stairs in a breathlessly short space of time.

“She’s going! She’s going!” she cried, rushing into the drawing-room, where her three friends were anxiously awaiting news, and Mr. Campbell, almost as anxious himself, was pacing the floor, his hands thrust deep into his pockets.

“Good work, little daughter!” he said, pausing in his walk. “I knew you could win her over if anybody could, although last night I was afraid we hadn’t the ghost of a show. She was dead set against it. The word ‘camp’ alone seemed to make her wild.”

“But, you see, she thought it was tents and flies and mosquitoes and tin cups.”

Mr. Campbell smiled.

“I think we won’t tell her any more, now that she has made up her mind. We’ll give her a little surprise. Call the camp a log hut and let it go at that.”

“Now, about clothes——” began Nancy Brown, and her friends all smiled. “Well, one must have clothes, even on a camping trip. Don’t you think a blue corduroy would be attractive, with a touch of coral pink in the silk tie, say; and high russet walking boots—the kind that lace, you know——”

“They must have rubber soles,” put in Billie, “no matter what the tops are.”

“And a straw hat in the natural color, with a brim that droops slightly, and a pheasant’s tail feather, slightly at one side——”

There was another burst of laughter at this juncture, and Mr. Campbell joined in.

“Miss Nancy,” he said, “I’m afraid you’ll have everything from hedge hogs to wood choppers at your feet if you make yourself so attractive in silks and velvets and russets——”

“Nothing perishable,” protested Nancy. “It will be quite suitable, of course. It’s a mountain costume I saw in a French fashion magazine, and it was really intended for an Alpine climber; only it was much fancier. The French lady in the picture wore a lace jabot and high-heeled shoes, and she carried an Alpine stock with a pink bow tied just below the crook.”

“Was the skirt hobble?” demanded Billie.

“It sounds to me like a Little Bo-Peep costume,” put in Mary Price.

“I think one should dress quite quietly on a camping party,” observed Elinor Butler.

Mr. Campbell seized his hat.

“My only advice to you, ladies,” he announced as he reached the door, “is to wear shoes that won’t turn your ankles; skirts that give you plenty of leeway for climbing, and shirts that may be easily washed, because laundries are not abundant in those regions. As for hats,” he finished, “you’ll probably not wear any after the first day, even the latest thing from the Alps trimmed with the tail feather of a pheasant. As for colors, the first time you go camping you’ll probably let your fancy run riot and wear Assyrian purple or crushed strawberry. But the next time, you’ll pass right down the line until you get to brown, because you will know by that time that brown fades brown. If campers had been born wild animals instead of human beings, Nature would surely have provided them with brown coats for utilitarian as well as protective purposes.”

“I thought we could just wear old clothes,” put in Mary Price, doubtfully. “I didn’t know people had costumes made for camping.”

Mr. Campbell thrust his genial, handsome face back into the room.

“Camping clothes are like bathing suits,” he remarked. “After the first wetting or so, they all look alike.”

“I’m sure blue corduroy will last,” cried Nancy. “The man at the store said it was unfadeable.”

“You mean that curly-haired clerk who wears the ruby scarf pin?” laughed Billie. “What’s his name?”

“Delosia Moxley,” answered Elinor. “He is always giving Nancy pointers about the latest modes. He was responsible for that Spanish veil she would wear last winter——”

“He was not,” interrupted Nancy. “He merely told me they were the fashion in New York. I needn’t have bought it if I hadn’t wanted to.”

“I suppose he furnished that French lady’s Alpine costume, too, didn’t he, Nancy Bell?”

Nancy smiled good-naturedly. She never really minded being teased about her elaborate taste in dress.

“His taste is extremely good,” she said. “He expects to run a millinery shop in a year or so. He says he can trim hats charmingly.”

“My word!” exclaimed Billie. “I suppose his mother will make your suit and he’ll pin the feather on the hat, and between them they will equip you to climb the Adirondacks. But, oh, Nancy, I implore you to explain to Mrs. Moxley that hobbles don’t go in the mountains.”

“She understands,” replied Nancy with much dignity. “She is going to make me the very latest thing in mountain-climbing suits, and she gets all her fashions straight from New York.”

Her friends exchanged covert glances and said nothing. Nancy’s conferences with Mrs. Moxley, the dressmaker, were a source of endless amusement to them. It was Mrs. Moxley who had made Nancy’s graduating costume that June, and never had been seen on the platform of West Haven High School such a fashionable toilette. It had a hobble skirt and a fancy little train that flopped about Nancy’s feet like a beaver’s tail, and at the reception afterwards the boys had teased her until she left in tears.

Two weeks had passed since graduation and our Motor Maids were just beginning to feel the results of their hard winter’s work. It had been a tough pull to catch up with their classes after the return from Japan. There had been no gayeties for them during the Christmas holidays, only continuous hard study, and for weeks afterwards Billie and Nancy and Elinor were tutored every afternoon. Mary Price, the best student of the three, had outstripped them, and in the end had carried off first honors and a scholarship besides. But after the excitement of finals, the four friends had collapsed like pricked balloons. Billie, mortified at what she considered a weakness in her character, had not been able to throw off a deep cold contracted in the spring. Mary Price was limp and white; Elinor had grown mortally thin, and even Nancy had lost her roundness, and her usually plump face was peaked and pale.

“My child needs mountain air!” said Mr. Campbell on one of his flying trips to West Haven. “She must not be in a hotel, and she must have her friends with her.”

With characteristic energy he had set to work to find a place somewhere in the mountains, and he had made three trips before he satisfied himself that “Sunrise Camp” in the Adirondacks, to let furnished, was exactly what he had been searching for. The owners had gone abroad and were glad to rent it at a low price.

To “Sunrise Camp” therefore, after due preparation, Miss Helen Campbell, the Motor Maids and Mr. Campbell, who went up to install them, departed. At the station next day they found the “Comet,” still attired in his blue suit acquired in Japan, in charge of a chauffeur from a nearby hotel. Along twenty-five miles of mountainous road the faithful car carried them, patiently climbing the last steep grade which led to a kind of shelf in the mountain whereon stood “Sunrise Camp.”

They had drawn up in front of a rustic hut built of logs with the bark left on. The roof had a graceful slant from the central peak, and over the gallery in front was another low-hanging roof like the visor of a cap. On one side of the camp, at no great distance from the house, a majestic army of pine trees had ranged itself in the manner of a silent and faithful guard. At the other side, the ledge sloped down in natural, uneven terraces to the valley far below. From the sleeping porches in the back could be seen a broad vista of low country encircled by a wall of mountains, now clothed in a mantle of purple shadows as the sun sank behind the crests of the opposite range. The air was hot and sweet and very dry, and the atmosphere vibrated with the hum of insects like the low, steady accompaniment of stringed instruments in a great orchestra. But at close view, it must be confessed, Nature was very dingy. The pine trees had a rusty look and the parched earth cried out for rain.

“Well, ladies, we are here,” remarked Mr. Campbell, “and I hope you’ll find it to your several tastes.”

“I am sure we will,” answered Mary politely, while the others moved in a silent procession toward the house.

Miss Campbell was already wondering how long they could endure this crude and lonely existence a hundred miles from anywhere. The contagion of doubt had indeed spread like a plague over the entire company, and all for the want of a bath, a supper and a good night’s rest.

“Ah, here are Mr. and Mrs. Lupo,” exclaimed Mr. Campbell in a tone of relief, as a man and woman approached down the gallery. “They are half Indians,” he added in a low voice. “Mrs. Lupo will be cook and her husband, guide, protector and man of all work.”

Miss Campbell turned reproachful eyes upon her relative.

So then they were to be left in charge of two half-breed Indians in this wild mountainous place, while he was away. Really, men were too incorrigible. But Mr. and Mrs. Lupo, at first glimpse, were far removed from savages. They were, apparently, like two shy, gentle animals with dark, shining eyes, and when they spoke, which was seldom, it was almost as if they had broken a vow of silence. Winter and summer they lived in these high places, and only occasionally did Mrs. Lupo descend to the valley to visit the little shops in the village and look upon the vanities of life.

“Well, Mrs. Lupo,” said Mr. Campbell, after shaking hands with the husband and wife and properly introducing them to the others, “I trust you have some food ready for a crowd of very hungry people. It was too hot this afternoon to be enthusiastic about lunch at the Valley Inn and hunger has overtaken us.”

Mrs. Lupo looked gravely from one face to another but said nothing.

“Supper will be ready in fifteen minutes,” answered her husband, and the strange pair promptly and quietly disappeared.

“She reminds me,” said Mary to Billie, “of one of those genii in fairy tales that appear when you want them and melt away when you have finished with them.”

“I wonder if she can cook,” was Billie’s unpoetic reply.

During these brief moments they had lingered on the dusty gallery, and now Mr. Campbell, eager as a boy for their approval, led them through the broad opening into the only room of the camp, of which they had caught glimpses as they waited outside. But they were quite unprepared for its vast size, capped by the unceiled roof now fast filling with shadows.

“Why, it’s really grand,” cried Miss Campbell, with a sudden spurt of enthusiasm. “It’s like a cathedral.”

“Isn’t it fine?” answered Mr. Campbell. “I think the primeval huts must have looked like this, and when it came time to build churches it wasn’t a very far cry.”

“I expect Mr. Primeval Man would have been mighty glad to have had one of those nice Morris chairs,” observed Billie.

“It would have been good-by to cathedrals then,” answered her father. “Mr. Primeval Man would have passed so much of his time in the easy chair that he would never have got beyond the age of dull-edged tools.”

And in this thoroughly modern primeval hut there were plenty of inducements to be lazy. Grouped about the stone chimney of an immense open fire-place were numerous easy chairs, and ranged against the dim confines of the walls were quite half a dozen cots to be used by people who might prefer to sleep indoors, Mr. Campbell explained.

The heads of several deer with branching antlers looked down at them from the walls, and on the floor in front of the fire-place was stretched the skin of a great black bear.

“Papa, I think it’s really beautiful,” exclaimed Billie, rubbing her cheek against her father’s shoulder.

“So do we all, Mr. Campbell,” cried the other Motor Maids.

“I am delighted and relieved,” he answered, rubbing his hands together with pleasure over their pleasure. “Better introduce Cousin Helen to her—er bedroom now, and wash up before supper,” he added, winking and grinning behind that little lady’s back.

Anybody would approve of the big room of the camp. It was indeed a splendid place, but how was Miss Campbell going to take to the dormitory? A flight of rustic steps at one end led to a gallery opening on this doubtful territory.

“Oh, how delightful,” cried Billie, rushing through the door with a great show of enthusiasm. “I have always wanted to sleep in the open and never had a chance except that one night on the plains. Remember, Cousin Helen? And how you did enjoy it, too!”

“One night, yes, my dear, but this is for some sixty nights or more,” answered Miss Campbell, surveying a row of cots placed at intervals along the porch. “I never slept in the room with anybody in my life before.”

“But this is not sleeping in a room. This is sleeping in the world, under the great dome of heaven,” exclaimed Billie, laughing uneasily.

“If you want privacy, you can draw a veil,” remarked Elinor, pointing to denim curtains on poles between some of the beds.

“And be alone in the world, under the great dome of heaven? Never!” cried Miss Campbell. “But do we dress out here in sight of the entire range of mountains? I should feel that each mountain had an eye turned on me.”

“Really, cousin, you remind me of the old lady from Skye,” ejaculated Billie:

“‘There was an old lady from Skye
Who was so exceedingly shy,
When she undressed at night,
She put out the light,
For fear of the all-seeing eye.’”

Miss Campbell so far forgot her objections as to burst out laughing, and she was still further placated by finding at one end of the porch a good-sized locker room, and adjoining that a bathroom.

“The water comes from the top of the mountain,” announced Billie. “It’s just piped in and doesn’t have to be pumped. Think of bathing in such clear pure water as that. Oh, I know camping like this will be perfect!”

“It may and it may not be,” observed Miss Campbell, bathing her hands and face in some of the crystal water. “Good heavens, what’s that?” she demanded, startled by the sound of a bugle in the twilight stillness. The call was loud and clear, reverberating among the mountains and coming back to them in a softened, muffled echo.

“That’s Mr. Lupo blowing the supper horn,” called Mr. Campbell from the sleeping porch below. Down they all filed and seated themselves anywhere around a long rustic table apparently loaded with food, for all the meal had been placed upon it regardless of ceremony, and people were expected to help themselves.

“Fall to, fall to, ladies,” said Mr. Campbell, serving slices of broiled ham until the pile of plates in front of him was reduced to one.

“Let’s introduce scientific management into this business,” suggested Billie. “With one deft movement of the arm, I’ll help each plate to creamed potatoes, passing them along in order to Nancy, who can dish out the baked omelette. While we are doing that Mary can serve the butter and Elinor can pass around the biscuits. There is no labor wasted and the food is distributed in the quickest possible time.”

“What shall I be doing?” asked Miss Campbell. “I don’t see that I am being scientifically managed.”

“Yes you are,” answered Mr. Campbell with a mischievous glance at the pretty little lady. “You are being scientifically managed by not being allowed to do anything.”

There was a chorus of drowsy, good-natured laughter. The leavening influence of food at a journey’s end was already beginning to take effect. Presently Mr. Lupo came in with a tray of cups and saucers and a pot of steaming hot coffee, and Mrs. Lupo, silent and soft of foot, placed four tall wooden candlesticks on the table, the light from the tallow candles shedding a yellow glow on their faces.

“Excuse me,” said Mary, rising, after the hungry company had cleared up everything before them, “I want to go to the end of the room and see what we look like. I feel as if we were making a picture somebody ought to see. We are,” she called presently from the far end of the vast apartment. “You’ve no idea how picturesque you look around that dark wooden table with those candles and the blue water pitcher and the pewter coffee pot.”

“And the empty omelette dish,” called Billie.

“And only one biscuit left,” added Elinor.

“I’ve no doubt Mr. Rembrandt would have painted us just so,” said Mr. Campbell.

“And called it ‘The Guild of The Globe Trotters’,” Miss Campbell was saying, when Mary gave a low exclamation of surprise. In order not to obstruct the beautiful view across the valley, the rustic porch had not been enclosed with screens, but the openings into the living room were screened, and, standing just outside the broad door, Mary saw a man peering into the room.

“I beg your pardon,” he said, “I am afraid I frightened you. I was lost on the side of the mountain, and when I saw the light in the camp I thought I would stop and ask the way.”

“Come in, won’t you?” said Mr. Campbell hospitably. “Have you had your supper?”

“I am afraid not,” answered the stranger with a short laugh.

“Mrs. Lupo, will you get this gentleman some supper?” called Mr. Campbell, while Miss Campbell, almost lost in one of the big chairs, was wondering if this were the etiquette of campers, and if they would be expected to take in strangers after Duncan had departed.

“Sit down,” went on the incorrigible Duncan. “We only arrived ourselves an hour ago, and we are hardly familiar with the house yet, but there is plenty of room. Won’t you stop over night? My name is Campbell.”

“My name is St. Clair,” answered the stranger. “I live in a place called West Haven. Ever hear of it?”

“Percy St. Clair!” cried the girls and Miss Helen. “Where did you come from?”

“The scheme worked pretty well, eh, Percy?” laughed Mr. Campbell, after the young man, their old friend and playmate, had shaken hands all around and insisted on hugging Miss Campbell. “I thought I would keep you as a surprise. Where’s the motor cycle?”

“It’s outside. I walked it up the last climb.”

“Did you have any trouble finding the way?”

“Considerable. That’s why I’m so late. A fellow told me the wrong road, and I was lost for a while and had a foolish adventure besides.”

“What was it? What was it?” they demanded.

Percy seated himself at the supper table, while Nancy poured out his coffee and Billie served him with ham and eggs.

“Well, I asked a man the way and he said, ‘Are you a doctor?’ I said, ‘Not yet, but soon.’ Then he showed me a road and told me there was a very sick woman in a house at the top, and would I call and see what could be done. You may imagine my feelings when I found that the road led straight to an old ruined hotel, and there wasn’t a human being in it as far as I could see nor any sign of one. So I got on my cycle and went back down the mountain until I found a sign board that put me on the right track again. But it was queer, wasn’t it, and rather uncanny, too.”

It was a strange experience, and after supper they sat under the stars discussing it until bedtime, and came to the conclusion that Percy had met a crazy man.

Never had Miss Helen Campbell slept so well as she did that night on the sleeping porch. Toward morning there came a quiet life-giving rain that freshened the parched earth and brought out the pungency of the pine trees. Only Mary knew of the shower and of the soft wind that followed just before dawn, bearing with it the fragrance of the wet woods. Only Mary saw the miracle of the dawn; first the faint flush of pink; then a deep rosy blush; next, rays of orange and gold, and at last the sun bursting into view. It was Mary who softly let down the bamboo blinds to keep out the sunlight and who finally slipped back to bed and went to sleep with the songs of innumerable forest birds in her ears.

It was an energetic summons to rise and view a fresh and beautiful world, and Billie, glancing at her watch, was aware that, as a concession to new arrivals, the summons had come half an hour later than scheduled. Half-past five was to be the hour for rising in camp, provided the ladies were willing. And certainly they showed no signs of unwillingness at the six o’clock call. Miss Campbell glanced placidly down the line of white cots. Then she inhaled a breath of the delicious air.

“In all my life I never slept as I did last night,” she announced. “Did somebody put sleeping drops in my coffee, I wonder?”

“I fancy the sleeping drops fell in the night in the form of showers,” observed Mary from her cot at the end of the line. “There was no storm, just one of those quiet steady rains, and I never saw people sleep so hard. I thought you were all dead until I heard Miss Campbell——” Mary paused and blushed. “That is, until I heard some one breathing very heavily.”

“Now, Mary Price, don’t tell me you heard me snore. I never did such a thing in my life,” cried Miss Campbell.

With a laugh, Billie leapt from her bed and ran to take a cold plunge in the mountain water which gurgled from the faucet with the pleasant song it had not left off singing when it leaped out of the side of the rock into the pipe.

At seven o’clock came the clarion call for breakfast: inviting and persuasive it was, with a lingering last note that fell softly on the ear and gradually died into discreet silence.

They had finished their morning toilets in the locker room, and were about to go downstairs when something tapped against one of the bamboo blinds. Billie promptly drew it up and looked into the clearing below.

“Who’s tapping at our chamber door?” she demanded.

A long fishing pole on which dangled five little nosegays made of ferns and grasses and wild asters was thrust at her. “Why, Algernon Percival,” she called. “I never dreamed you were so energetic.”

“Not guilty,” answered that young man’s voice from the lower porch. “When the bugle sounded just now, I was taking a shower bath. I’m still busy, but it doesn’t take long to get into camping clothes. Who is the only person we know who would get up at dawn and go tramping off for wild flowers?”

A tall, lanky figure stepped out from the shadow of the gallery and lifted his handsome, thoughtful face up to the girls leaning over the railing.

“Why, it’s Ben Austen,” they cried. “Dear old Ben, when did you come?”

“Last night at ten o’clock,” he answered. “The ’bus wouldn’t come up from the village at that hour, so I walked. It was great. How are all of you?” he added, wiggling the nosegays in front of their noses.

“We’re as fine as silk,” answered Billie, with a happy laugh. “And it’s such fun that you and Percy are here. Papa kept it a secret so as to surprise us, I suppose.”

“I hope it’s a pleasant surprise.”

“The jolliest kind,” they cried, running downstairs at the second call to breakfast.

Those of you who have read the first volume of this series, “The Motor Maids’ School Days,” will recall Percy St. Clair and Ben Austen, two West Haven boys who were great friends of the girls during that winter when Billie Campbell and her red car first made their appearance in the town. Percy, in the transition from boyhood to manhood, has changed very little. He is of medium height, and his handsome fair face still flushes like a schoolgirl’s, to his great annoyance. Ben, at nineteen, is six feet tall. His face has developed since we knew him some years ago. His features are large and regular, his dark eyes filled with serious intent, and a mop of curly black hair covers his head like a thick cap.

Downstairs they found Mr. Campbell pouring for himself a cup of coffee. The camp table was never to be set for breakfast, but the dishes were to be piled at one end and the food at the other, and each camper was to help himself to what he chose. There was a good deal of laughing and scrambling at this morning meal. It started everybody off in a good humor, and in time it became the hour for jokes and absurdities that will never die out as long as there are boys and girls enough to keep them alive.

After they had disposed of quantities of very good food, at least it seemed good to mountain appetites, Mr. Campbell took a sheet of letter paper from his pocket and rapped for quiet.

“Young people, I want to read you a few rules which must be obeyed if camp is to be run on a military basis, the only way a camp can be successfully conducted. Here they are:

“‘RULES FOR SUNRISE CAMP.