r the occasion. They ate Johnnie cakes from wooden
platters and drank black coffee from glasses, Russian fashion. Later
they sang songs and told stories around the camp fire. Never did people
commingle so agreeably as the caravanners and the motorists. 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."

To their surprise, Miss Campbell was agreeable to the plan.

"There's nobody at home to worry but Alberdina," she said, "and it won't
hurt her to lose a little flesh, anyhow."

The boys worked hard over the beds. Springy couches they made of spruce
branches, covered with blankets, and, at last as care-free as a lot of
Gypsies, they all slept as soundly as they had ever slept in their own
beds at home.

CHAPTER XII.

THE RETURN.

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. 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 you," 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. We are not attempting long distance records. We
are just getting intimate with the ups and downs of the country; the
streams and rivers; the little valleys and bits of green by the
roadside. So