Betty Gordon at Mountain Camp by Alice B. Emerson

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When Betty and Bobby came out of the store, much disappointed, they found
Bob grinning--as Bobby declared--"like a Cheshire cat."

"But never mind the cat," continued Bobby. "What is the matter with that
boy? For boys will laugh at the most serious things. And this is serious,
my poor, dear Betty."

"Indeed it is," agreed her friend, and so they crossed the walk to the
grinning Bob Henderson who had the scrap of newspaper Betty had given him
in his hand.

"Say," he drawled, "who did you say this aunt of Ida Bellethorne is?"

"Mrs. Staples says she is a concert singer--a prima donna," replied Betty.

"She's a prima donna all right," chuckled Bob. "Where now? Oh! To Stone's
shoe shop? Well, what do you know about this notice in the paper?" and his
smile grew broader.

"What do you mean, Bob?" demanded Betty, rather vexed. "You can read the
paragraph yourself. 'The great Ida Bellethorne'. That means she is a great
singer of course."

"Yes, I see," replied Bob, giving some attention to the steering of the
car. "But there is one thing about you girls--you never read the sporting
page of the newspaper."

"What is that?" gasped Bobby Littell.

"This string of items you handed me is torn out of the sporting page. All
the paragraphs refer to racing matters. That particular one deals with Mr.
Bolter's black mare, Ida Bellethorne. Cliffdale is the place he was
shipping her to far her health."

"Never!" cried Bobby.

"Oh, Bob! Is that so?" gasped Betty.

Bob burst into open laughter. "That's a good one on you and on your
friend, Ida," he declared. "If she has gone to meet her aunt up in New
York State she'll meet a horse instead. How's that for a joke?"

Betty Gordon shook her head without smiling. "I don't see the joke at
all," she said. "Poor Ida! She will be sadly disappointed. And she has
lost her position here with Mrs. Staples. We could see that Mrs. Staples
was angry because she went away."

"Why," cried Bobby, likewise sympathetic, "I think it is horrid--actually
horrid! You needn't laugh, Bob Henderson."

"Shucks!" returned the boy. "I can't cry over it, can I? Of course it is
too bad the girl has made such a mistake. But our weeping won't help her."

"No," confessed Bobby, "I suppose that is so."

"And our weeping won't find my locket," sighed Betty. "Dear me! If I did
drop it in Stone's place I hope they have saved it for me."

But the locket was not to be found in that shop, either. Nor in the two
others which Betty Gordon had visited the previous day. This indeed was a
perfectly dreadful thing! The plainer it was that the locket could not be
found, the more repentent and distracted Betty became.

"I shall have to tell Uncle Dick--I shall have to," she wailed, when Bob
drove them away from the last place and all hope was gone glimmering. "Oh,
dear! It is dreadful."

"Don't take on so, Betty!" Bob begged gruffly, for he could not bear to
see the girl actually cry. "I'll tell him if you are afraid to."

"Don't you dare!" she flared out at him. "I'm not afraid. Only I dread it.
It was the nicest present he ever gave me and--and I loved it. But I did
not take proper care of it. I realize that now, when it is too late."

Bob remained serious of aspect after that. That his mind was engaged with
the problem of Betty's lost trinket was proved by what he said on the way
back to Fairfields:

"I suppose you spoke to all the clerks you traded with in those stores,
Betty?"

"Why, yes. All but Ida Bellethorne, Bob."

"And Mrs. Staples said she didn't know anything about Betty's locket,"
Bobby put in.

Of course, this was not so; but Bobby thought she was telling the exact
truth. The two girls really had not explained Betty's loss to Mrs. Staples
at all.

"The English girl going off so suddenly, and on such a wild-goose chase,
looks kind of fishy, you know," drawled Bob.

"She thinks she is chasing her aunt!" Bobby cried.

"Maybe."

"You don't even know her, Bob," declared Betty haughtily. "You can't judge
her character. I am sure she is honest."

"Well," grumbled Bob, "being sure everybody is honest isn't going to get
you that locket back, believe me!"

"That's horrid, too! Isn't it, Betty?" demanded Bobby.

"It's sort of, I guess," said Betty, much troubled, "But, oh, Bob! I don't
want to think that poor girl found my locket and ran away with it. No, I
don't want to believe that. And, anyway, it doesn't help me out a mite.
I've got to tell Uncle Dick before he notices that I don't display his
pretty present any more. Oh, dear!"

"It's a shame," groaned Bobby, holding her chum's hand tightly.

"Guess there are worse things than measles in this world," observed Bob,
as he stopped the small car under the _porte cochere_ at Fairfields.

CHAPTER IX

THE LIVE WIRE OCTETTE

It was not an easy thing to do; but Betty Gordon did it. She confessed the
whole wretched thing to Uncle Dick and was assured of his forgiveness. But
perhaps his serious forgiveness was not the easiest thing for the girl to
bear.

"I am sure, as you say, that you did not mean to be careless," Mr. Richard
Gordon said gently. It was hard for him to be strict with Betty; but he
knew her impulsiveness sometimes led her into a reckless path. "But mark
you, Betty: The value of that locket should have, in itself, made you
particularly careful of it."

"I--I valued it more because you gave it to me, Uncle Dick," she sobbed.

"And yet that did not make you particularly careful," the gentleman
reminded her. "The main trouble with you, Betty, is that you have no very
clear appreciation of the value of money."

"Oh, Uncle Dick!" and she looked at him with trembling chin and tears
welling into her eyes.

"And why should you?" he added, laughing more lightly and patting her
hand. "You have never been obliged to earn money. Think back to the time
you were with the Peabodys. The money my lawyer sent you for your own use
just burned holes in your pinafore pockets, didn't it?"

"I didn't wear pinafores, Uncle Dick," Betty said soberly. "Girls don't
nowadays."

"No, I see they don't," he rejoined, smiling broadly again. "But they did
in my day. However, in whatever pocket you put that money as you got it,
the hole was figuratively burned, wasn't it?"

"We--ell, it went mostly for food. Mr. Peabody was such a miser!
And--and----"

"And so when you wanted to come away from Bramble Farm you actually had to
borrow money," went on Uncle Dick. "Of course, you were fortunate enough
finally to get the lawyer's check and pay your debts. But the fact remains
that you seem unable to keep money."

"Oh, Uncle Dick!"

"Now," continued her guardian still soberly, "a miser like Mr. Peabody for
instance is a very unpleasant person. But a spendthrift often does even
more harm in the world than a miser. I don't want my Betty-girl to be a
spendthrift."

"Oh, Uncle Dick!"

"The loss of your pretty locket, my dear, has come because of that trait
in your character which ignores a proper appreciation of the value of
money and what can be bought with it. Now, I can buy you another
locket----"

"No, no, Uncle Dick! I don't deserve it," she said with her face hidden
against his shoulder as she sat in his lap.

"That is true, my dear. I don't really think you do deserve another--not
right at once. And, anyway, we will advertise for the locket in the
newspapers and may recover it in that way. So we will postpone the
purchase of any other piece of jewelry at present.

"What I have in my mind, however, and have had for some time, is the
reorganization of your financial affairs," and now he smiled broadly as
she raised her head to look at him. "I think of putting you on a monthly
allowance of pocket money and asking you to keep a fairly exact account of
your expenditures. Not an account to show me. I don't want you to feel as
though you were being watched."

"What do you mean, Uncle Dick?"

"I want you to keep account for your own satisfaction. I want you to know
at the end of the month where your money has gone to. It is the best
training in the world for a girl, as well as a boy, to know just what she
has done with the money that has passed through her hands. And in this
case I am sure in time that it will give you a just comprehension of
money's value.

"If we do not recover the locket, why, in time, we will look about for
another pretty trinket----"

"No, Uncle Dick," Betty said seriously. "I loved that locket. I should
have been more careful of it. I hope it will be found and returned to me.
I do! I do! But I don't want you to give me another."

"Why not?" he asked, yet giving her quite an understanding look.

"I guess you know, Uncle Dick," she sighed. "I don't really deserve it.
And it wouldn't be that locket that you gave me for Christmas, you see."

"Well, my dear----"

"Wait, dear Uncle Dick! I want to say something more," said the girl,
hugging him tightly again. "If you give me a certain sum of money to spend
for myself every month I am going to save out of it until I have enough to
buy a locket exactly like that one I lost--If it isn't found, I mean."

"Ah!"

"You approve, Uncle Dick?"

"Most assuredly. That would be following out my suggestion of learning to
take care of money in the fullest sense, my dear."

"Then," said Betty, bouncing happily on his knee, "that is what I am going
to try to do. But I do hope my locket will be found!"

This serious conference was broken up at this point by the arrival of the
telegram Uncle Dick had been expecting from Mountain Camp. Mrs. Jonathan
Canary had signed it herself and it was to the effect that the young
friends of Mr. Richard Gordon would be as welcome as that gentleman
himself.

Bob immediately saddled a horse and galloped to the Derbys and the Tuckers
to carry the news. Final plans were made for departure the next morning
and in spite of a rather threatening change in the weather the party left
Fairfields on time and in high spirits for upper New York State.

A few flakes of snow had begun fluttering down as the train pulled out of
Washington; and as it raced across the Maryland fields and through the
hills which grace that State the snow blew faster and faster and thicker
and thicker. But even in midwinter snow storms do not much obstruct
traffic so far south, and the gay party from Fairfields had no suspicion
that it was being borne into any peril or trouble. What was a little snow
which scarcely, at first, caught upon the brown fields?

They had engaged two whole sections for the young folks and an extra place
for Uncle Dick. The latter did not interfere at all with the fun and
frolic of his charges. He was--he should have been--used by now to the
ridiculous antics of the Tucker twins and the overflowing spirits of the
rest of the octette. Bachelor as he was, Mr. Richard Gordon considered
himself pretty well acquainted with young folks of their age.

The two sections occupied by the eight girls and boys were opposite each
other and they had that end of the car pretty much to themselves. Of
course, people sometimes had to go through the aisle--and others besides
the conductor and the porter; but after running the gauntlet of that
lively troop once the restless passenger usually tried to keep out of the
"line of fire."

The fun the party had was good-natured sport for the most part. Their
practical jokes were aimed at each other rather than at their fellow
passengers. But it was a fact that there was very little peace for a
nervous person in that Pullman coach.

"We're the live-wire octette, and we are going to let everybody know it,"
proclaimed Tommy Tucker vociferously. "Say! there's a chap up at the other
end of the car, sprawled all over his seat--fresh kid, he is. Did you
notice him?"

"I did," replied his twin. "I fell over his foot twice when I went for a
drink."

"Why didn't you look where you were walking?" grinned Bob Henderson
craning his neck to see up the aisle and mark the passenger in question.

"Huh!" grumbled Ted, "he stuck it out for me to tumble over both
times--and you know this train is joggling some."

"Ill say so," agreed Bob.

But Betty had jumped up to look and she said eagerly:

"Do you mean the man with the silk handkerchief over his head? He must be
asleep, or trying to sleep."

"I tell you he is just a fresh kid," said Tommy Tucker. "And I'm going to
fix him."

"Now, boys, be careful what you do," advised Louise, who occasionally
considered it her duty to put on a sober, admonishing air.

Tommy, however, started for the nearest exit to the platform of the car.
He was gone some time, and when he reappeared he carried in both hands a
great soggy snowball, bigger than the biggest grapefruit.

"Gee, folks!" he whispered, "it's snowing, and then some! I never saw such
a snow. And the porter says it is likely to get worse the farther north we
go. Suppose we should be snowbound?"

There was a chorus of cries--of fearful delight on the part of the girls,
at least--at this announcement.

"Never mind," Bob Henderson said, "we have a dining car hitched to this
train, so we sha'n't starve I guess, if we are snowed up. What are you
going to do with that snow, Tommy?"

The Tucker twin winked prodigiously. "I'm going to take it up the aisle
and show it to Mr. Gordon. He doesn't know it's snowing like this," said
the boy quite soberly.

"Why, Tommy Tucker!" cried Betty, "of course Uncle Dick knows it is
snowing. Can't he see it through the window?"

But when she looked herself at the window beside her she was amazed to see
that the pane was masked with wet snow and one could scarcely see through
it at all. Besides, evening was falling fast.

"I do hope," Teddy remarked, watching his brother start up the aisle, "he
tumbles in the right place."

"What is he going to do with that snowball?" demanded Louise.

"I know! I know!" giggled Bobby, in sudden delight. "That man with the
silk hander chief over his head is going to get a shower."

"He isn't a man. He's just a fresh kid," declared Ted, but he said it
somewhat anxiously now.

"Stop him, somebody!" cried Louise. "He'll get into trouble."

"If you ask me," drawled Bob Henderson, "I think that somebody else is
going to get into trouble. I saw that chap stick his foot out and trip
Ted before."

"He did it unknowingly," cried Betty, under her breath. "He's asleep."

"If he is he won't be long," whispered Bobby, clutching at Betty and
holding her into the seat. "Let Tommy Tucker be. If that fellow trips
him----"

The next instant Tommy did trip. Without any doubt the well shod foot of
the man lolling in the seat slid into the aisle as the boy with the
snowfall approached, and Tommy pitched over it with almost a certainty of
falling headlong. Indeed, he would have gone to the floor of the car had
he not let go of the mass of snow in his hands and clutched at the seat
arms.

"Whoo!" burst out Teddy Tucker in delight. "Now that fresh kid's got his!"

For the soft snowball in Tommy's hands landed plump upon the
handkerchief-covered crown of the person sprawling so ungracefully in the
Pullman seat! The victim uttered a howl audible above the drumming of the
car wheels. And he leaped upright between the seats of his section, beat
the fast-melting snow off his head and face, and displayed the latter to
the young peoples' amazement as that of a very stern looking gentleman
indeed with a bald head and gray side whiskers.

"Oh, my aunt's cat and all her kittens!" gasped Bob Henderson. "Now Tommy
has done it! See who it is, Ted?"

Teddy Tucker was as pale as the snow his brother had brought in from
outside and which now showered about the victim of the ill-timed jest.

"Ma--Major Pater! From Salsette! He has an artificial leg, and that's why
it was sticking out in the aisle whenever he nodded off. Oh,
Jimminy-beeswax! what's going to become of Tommy?"

CHAPTER X

BEAUTIFUL SNOW

The girls had heard the boys who attended Salsette Academy mention that
martinet, Major Pater. Although his infirmity--or injury--precluded his
having anything to do with the drilling of the pupils of the academy, in
the schoolroom he was the most stern of all the instructors at Salsette.

"Oh, poor Tommy!" gasped Betty, wringing her hands.

"Served him right," declared Louise. "He should not have played that
trick. A lame man, too!"

"Oh, Louise!" exclaimed her sister Bobby, "Tommy didn't know it was an
artificial limb he was stumbling over."

"And I'm sure I didn't know it was his old peg-leg I tripped on twice,"
declared Teddy Tucker in high dudgeon. "What did he want to go to sleep
for, spraddled all over the aisle?"

He said this in a very low voice, however; and be kept well behind Bob and
the girls. As for Timothy Derby and Libbie Littell they actually never
heard a word of all this! They sat side by side in one of the sections and
read together Spenser's _Faerie Queene_--understanding, it must be
confessed, but an infinitesimal part of that poem.

The other passengers near Major Pater, without any doubt, were vastly
amused by his condition. The melting snow cascaded off his head and
shoulders, and not a little of it went down his neck. Such a military
looking and grim-faced man, standing so stiff and upright, seemed all the
more ridiculous under these conditions.

"H-r-r-rrp!" barked Major Pater, glaring at Tommy Tucker as though his
eyes would burn holes right through that boy's jacket.

Tommy sprang to attention. He was in citizen's dress, as was the major;
but Tommy was sure the martinet knew him.

"What do you mean, young man, by pouring a bucket of slush over my head
and shoulders?" demanded the angry Major.

"Please, sir, if you'll let me wipe it off----"

Tommy had produced his own handkerchief and made a feeble attempt to
attack the melting snow on the Major's shoulders.

"H-r-r-rrp!" barked the Major again, and Tommy translated it as meaning
"as you were" and came once more to attention in the middle of the aisle.

One could not really help the angry gentleman, if one was kept standing in
that ridiculous position. And the passengers near by were more amused than
before by the attitude and appearance of the two engaged in the
controversy.

"Are you aware of what you have done?" demanded Major Pater, at last
"Humph! Tucker of the Fourth, isn't it?"

"Ye--ye--yes, sir," gasped Tommy. Then: "One of the Tuckers, sir."

"Oh! Ah! Can there be two such awkward Tuckers?" demanded Major Paten
"Humph! Is this your father, Tucker?"

For by this time Uncle Dick saw what was going on and he approached,
smiling it must be confessed, but with a towel secured from the men's
lavatory.

"I am acting in the capacity of guardian for the present, sir," said Mr.
Gordon frankly. "This is a ridiculous thing; but I do not think the boy
quite intended all that happened."

At once he began flicking away the melted snow, and then rubbed Major
Pater's bald head dry. All the time he continued to talk to the military
academy instructor:

"I grant you that it looks very awkward on Tucker's part. But, you see,
Mr.--er--?"

"Ma--Major Pater!" stammered Tommy Tucker.

"Quite so. Major, of course. Major Pater, you will realize that the boy in
coming along the aisle--Er, by the way, Tommy, what were you coming for?"

"I was coming to you, Mr. Gordon, to show you how fast the snow was
gathering. I--I scraped that ball of it off the step. The porter opened
the door for me just a moment. I say, Mr. Gordon, it's a fierce storm!"

Tommy came through this explanation pretty well. Uncle Dick's
understanding smile helped him a good bit.

"Quite so," said Mr. Gordon, and looking at Major Pater again. "Of course,
I would never have known it was snowing if you had not undertaken to show
me. But you see, Major Pater, your foot was sticking out into the aisle. I
saw it. You have the misfortune to----"

"Artificial leg, sir," growled Major Pater.

"Quite so. Well, accidents will happen, you know. There! You are quite dry
again. I don't think you will get much sleep here until the porter makes
up the berths. Suppose we go into the smoking compartment and soothe our
minds, Major?"

"Ah--Humph! Thank you, Mr.--er----?"

"Mr. Gordon," explained Tommy Tucker still standing as though he had
swallowed a very stiff poker indeed.

"Ah! Glad to meet you, Mr. Gordon." They shook hands. Then Major Pater
shot another command at Tommy: "H-r-r-rrp!" (or so it sounded) and the boy
with vast relief dropped his stiff military pose.

The rest of the "live wire octette"--even Timothy and Libbie--were highly
delighted by the outcome of Tommy's joke. For, if there is fun in such a
practical joke as Tommy had tried to carry through, they thought there was
double fun in seeing the biter bitten!

"Now will you be good?" crowed his brother, Ted. "See what you get for
being so fresh! Tumbling over his game leg and pitching a wilted snowball
at the Major's head. Aren't you ashamed of yourself?"

"Oh, hush!" grumbled Tommy. "You needn't say anything. He doesn't know
which of the Tucker twins it was crowned him with that snowball, and you
are just as much in his bad books as I am. Remember that."

"Listen to him!" cried Ted, at once feeling abused. "And Major Pater is
near-sighted, too, although he scorns to wear glasses. You've got me into
a mess, too, Tommy Tucker."

"There! There!" said Betty Gordon, soothingly. "Never mind. Uncle Dick
will smooth him down. But I do think, boys, that you need not have got
into trouble at all."

"Huh! that's our natural state," observed Teddy. "Boys out of trouble are
like fish out of water. So my dad says. And he ought to know," he grinned.
"He has twins."

Tommy considered, however, that he had got out of a bad box pretty easily.

"Your Uncle Dick is fine, Betty," he observed. "Think of his getting on
the blind side of Major Pater so easy. But cracky! how that snow did
squash all over him," and he ended with a wicked giggle.

"One of your instructors, too!" exclaimed Louise. "For shame!"

"My!" chuckled Bobby, "what we'd like to do to Miss Prettyman at
Shadyside!"

"I am afraid Miss Prettyman is no more beloved than Major Pater is."

"Never mind, you girls!" interrupted Tommy, with renewed interest in the
storm and trying to peer through the window. "It's a regular blizzard.
When the porter opened the door of the vestibule for me to get that snow,
I thought he wouldn't get it shut again."

"Suppose we get stalled?" questioned Louise, inclined to be the most
thoughtful of the party.

"Well, suppose we do?" returned Bob. "I tell you we are all right for
food, for the dining car----"

"Oh, I forgot to tell you," Tommy put in. "The porter let me into a
secret. The diner was dropped about thirty miles back. Broken flange of
one wheel and no time, of course, to put on a new wheel."

"Goodness!" exclaimed Betty. "I begin to feel hungry already."

"Of course, we'll pick up another diner?" asked Libbie, though rather
doubtfully.

"We'll hope so!" Bobby cried.

"If we get through to Tonawanda, yes," said Tommy Tucker. "That's what the
porter told me. But we don't get there, if we are on schedule, until eight
o'clock."

"There! I knew I was perishing of hunger," exclaimed Betty. "It's half
past four already," she added, looking at her wrist watch.

"Three and a half hours to dinner time?" wailed Bobby. "Oh!
That--is--tough!"

"That is, if we make the regular time," Bob said thoughtfully. "And right
now, let me tell you, this train is just about crawling, and that's all.
Humph! The soup sure will get cold in that dining car at Tonawanda, if it
waits there to be attached to our train."

"Oh! Oh!" cried Bobby. "Don't let's think of it. I had no idea that snow
could be so troublesome."

"Beautiful snow!" murmured Betty. "Say, Libbie. Recite that for us, will
you? You know: the poetry about 'Beautiful Snow.' You or Timothy should
remember it."

"Pah!" exclaimed Bobby, grumblingly. "I'll give you the proper version:

"Beautiful snow! If it chokes up this train,
It certainly will give me a pain!"

"Goodness me, Bobby!" retorted her cousin, Libbie, "your versifying
certainly gives me a pain."

CHAPTER XI

STALLED, AND WITHOUT A DOCTOR

The rapidity with which the storm had increased and the drifts had filled
the cuts through which the rails were laid was something that none of the
party bound for Mountain Camp had experienced. Unless Uncle Dick be
excepted. As Betty said, Mr. Richard Gordon had been almost everywhere and
had endured the most surprising experiences. That was something that
helped to make him such a splendid guardian.

"Yes," he agreed, when Betty dragged him down the car aisle to the two
sections which he had wisely abandoned entirely to his young charges, "we
had considerable snow up there in the part of Canada where I have been
this fall. Before I came down for the Christmas holidays there was about
four feet of snow on the level in the woods and certain sections of the
railroad up there had been entirely abandoned for the winter. Horse sleds
and dog sleighs do all the transportation until the spring thaw."

"Oh, do you suppose," cried Libbie, big-eyed, "that we may be snowbound at
Mountain Camp so that we cannot get back until spring?"

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