"Yes, indeed!" chorused four voices; even Ruth agreed with her friends about this week-end outing.
By Sat.u.r.day the girls had paid for the tent and outfit bought of the man, and had nineteen dollars left for expenses at a camp that summer.
They were at Headquarters (they named the tent on the back-lawn "Dandelion Headquarters") an hour before the time decided upon for the early start to the mountains. But it was as Julie said:
"Better too early than too late!"
Mrs. Vernon was giving last instructions about packing a luncheon to take with them, then she came out and joined her Patrol.
"What do you think, Verny? Eliza said she would bake us a crockful of ginger-snaps and cookies every week this summer, and send them to camp for us, because we would not be home to eat."
"How are you going to get them? I asked mother about the campsite and she said it was three or four miles from any village," said Ruth, this being the first inkling she had given that she had inquired about the camp.
"Why Rural Delivery will leave it for us, Daddy said," replied Julie.
"And my mother said I could make fudge to sell to my family and friends.
She would give me the sugar and chocolate. Father ordered two pounds then and there--so that makes a dollar more that I shall have earned before next week," said Joan.
"I can make good fudge, too. I"ll ask May if I may sell it!" exclaimed Julie.
"Our waitress left last night, and mother said she would pay me a quarter a night if I would wash the dishes. But I hate doing dishes. The greasy water gets all over your hands and then they smell so!" said Ruth, not willing to be left out of this working-community.
"Did you do them?" eagerly asked the girls.
"Of course not! I didn"t want to feel all warm and sticky for the rest of the evening. Besides, I manicured my nails so nicely just before dinner."
"Dear me! I wish your mother would let me do them--for a quarter a night!" sighed Betty, anxiously.
"Even if she did, would you give _that_ money to the Patrol?" wondered Ruth, doubtfully.
"Sure! Aren"t we all earning for the general good?"
"Well, I"ll ask mother if she"ll let you do them," replied Ruth, magnanimously. She actually felt that she was bestowing a favor on Betty by allowing her to wash her dishes and donate the earnings to the camp-fund.
CHAPTER THREE
THE OLD CAMPSITE
Early Sat.u.r.day morning the chauffeur brought the car over to the tent, and Mrs. Vernon told the girls to jump in while she sent Jim for the lunch-baskets. She got in the front seat, as she proposed driving the car.
When all was ready, the merry party started off with Mr. Vernon wishing them a good time. They were soon outside of town limits, and skimming over a good hard country road. Then Mrs. Vernon drove slower and spoke of the place they were bound for.
"Of course you know, girls, that it is not necessary for you to select this site if you do not like it. I am merely driving you there because it seems to meet with our present needs for a camp-life. We still have other places we can investigate, as there is a pyramid of catalogues on the table in the tent."
"But every one of those camping places will cost us so much money to reach, and that won"t leave us anything for board," said Joan.
"Father told us last night that he always wanted to get a crowd of the boys to go with him to that camp you all made when you were girls. But his chums wanted to go so far away that they never got anywhere to camp in the end," said Betty.
"Yes, and he said he wished he could have his boyhood over again. Then he"d spend his vacations in camp even if it was near home," added Julie.
Mrs. Vernon smiled. "I remember how jealous a few of the boys were when they heard us talk of the fun we had in camp. Betty"s mother was so sorry for them that she invited them to visit the camp now and then.
Betty takes after her mother for having a great heart."
"Maybe we can invite our folks to visit us, too," said Julie, eagerly.
"So we can--if they will come and bring supplies," said Ruth.
Every one laughed at this suggestion, and Ruth added: "Well, we can"t afford to pay for visitors, can we? I won"t be surprised to find that we shall have to break camp and return home in a month"s time, just for lack of funds to go on with the experiment."
"We won"t do even that if we have to chop cord wood to pay our way,"
laughed Mrs. Vernon.
"Are there big trees on the mountain, Verny?" asked Betty.
"We girls thought it a great forest in those days. To us it seemed as if the trees were giants--but we had not seen the Redwoods of California then," Mrs. Vernon chuckled as she spoke.
"What do you call it now?" asked Joan.
"This ridge has no individual name that I know of, but the range is an extension of those known by the name of Blue Mountains. The place I have in mind is one of the prettiest spots on this particular spur of hills.
You will find forest trees, streams, pools for bathing, softest moss for carpets, flowers for study, wild woodland paths for hikes--in fact everything to rejoice a nature-lover"s heart."
"Dear me, can"t you speed up a little?" asked Julie.
"No, don"t, Verny--we"ll land in jail if you go faster!" exclaimed Ruth.
"Let"s call this spur "Verny"s Mountain," shall we, girls?" suggested Betty.
"Yes, let"s!" abetted Joan.
The automobile rolled smoothly and swiftly along, and after the first excitement had abated somewhat, the girls begged their Captain to tell them how she had found the place and what they did at camp when she was a girl.
"I think it was that one summer in camp that made me eager to give every girl an opportunity to enjoy a like experience. But we went there under far different auspices than you girls are now doing. We had to convince our parents that we would not be murdered by tramps, or starved, or made ill by sleeping out-of-doors in the woods.
"Then, too, we had to load our outfit on a farm-wagon and climb in on top of it so that one trip would do all the moving, as horses were scarce for pleasure-trips, but were needed for farm-work in those days.
"I can remember the shock we girls created with the village people, when it was whispered around that we proposed a camp-life that summer, instead of sitting home to do tatting and bleaching the linen. It was all right for boys to have a camp for fun--but for girls, never!
"However we six girls were of the new era for women, and we wanted to do the things our brothers and their schoolmates did. They could go camping and fishing and hiking so why couldn"t we? What difference did skirts and pig-tails make in vacation-time? So we won over our parents" consent to let us try it for a week.
"But we stayed a month, and then a second month until we made the whole summer of it. And, girls, we brought home more knitted socks and crochet tr.i.m.m.i.n.g and tatting, with an abundance of good health and experience thrown in, than all the rest of the girls in the village could show together.
"Even the parson, who had visited our mothers to dissuade them from allowing us this unheard-of freedom of camp-life, had to admit that he had been prejudiced by members of his congregation."
"Just like a story-book, Verny! Do tell us what you did when you first got to camp?" cried Julie.
"Well, it was lucky for us girls that my brother Ted drove the farm-wagon for us. When we reached the steep road that ran up over the mountain, we had to leave the horses and wagon and carry our outfit to the site we had selected.