had kept still we could have gone and nobody would
have been the wiser. Now it will be no end of trouble to get there
without her finding it out."

"You don't mean that you are going after all that godmother has said?"
cried Betty, with a look of horror in her big brown eyes. "Why, a wild
Arab wouldn't treat his host with such disrespect as that after he'd
eaten his salt."

Eugenia's black eyes flashed dangerously. "Yes, Miss Prunes and Prisms,
I am going, I don't care what you say. I have made up my mind to have my
fortune told by the seventh daughter of a seventh daughter, that was
born on the banks of the Nile, and all the king's horses and all the
king's men can't make me change it again. It is foolish of Cousin
Elizabeth to be so particular, and I am going to do as I please. I
always do at home, no matter what papa says. I've never had to mind
anybody all my life, and I'll certainly not begin it now that I am in my
teens. It is all nonsense about it not being proper for us to go to the
camp. Cousin Elizabeth is mighty nice and sweet, but she's an old fogy
to talk that way. And she needn't think she has stopped me. I may not
get there to-day, but I'll go to that camp before I go back to New York
if it's the last thing I do."

She sprang out of the hammock and walked haughtily down the path, her
head held high, and her pink ruffles switching angrily from side to
side. Betty followed at a safe distance, reaching the house in time to
see Joyce and Lloyd come down, ready for their ride. She would have made
some excuse to stay at home if she thought that Eugenia intended to
carry out her plans at once; but thinking she would surely not attempt
it until a later day, she mounted with the others and started down the
avenue.

At the gate, as they turned into the public road, they spied a noisy
little cavalcade racing down the pike toward them. Rob Moore led the
charge, and two strangers were following hard behind.

"It's the MacIntyre boys," exclaimed the Little Colonel, shading her
eyes with her hand and then half turning in her saddle to explain to the
girls. "It's Malcolm and Keith. You'll like them. They stayed out heah
with their grandmothah one whole wintah, and they used to come up to ou'
house lots. You remembah I told you 'bout them. They bought that pet
beah from a tramp and neahly frightened me to death at their valentine
pahty. I went into a dahk room, where it was tied up, and didn't know it
was theah till