t let you
slide to the very bottom," said Teddy.

"Don't fret," returned Betty gaily. "I don't intend to take another such
slide----"

"Not even if your Uncle Dick takes you up to Mountain Camp?" asked Bobby.
"There's fine tobogganing up there, he says. Mmmm!"

"Don't talk about it!" wailed Betty. "You know we can't go, for school
begins next week and Uncle Dick won't hear to anything breaking in on my
schooling."

"Not even measles?" suggested Tommy Tucker solemnly. "Two of the fellows
were quarantined with it when we left Salsette," he added.

"Oh! don't speak of such a horrid thing," gasped Libbie, who did not
consider measles in the least romantic. "You get all speckled like--like a
zebra if you have 'em."

The twins uttered a concerted shout and almost rolled out of their saddles
into which they had again mounted after assisting the girls, Betty being
astride Bob's horse.

"Speckled like a zebra is good!" Bobby Littell said laughingly to her
plump cousin. "I suppose you think a barber's pole is speckled, Libbie?"

These observations attracted the deluded Libbie sufficiently from her
hero-worship, so that when Bob Henderson came up out of the ravine to join
them a mile beyond the scene of the accident, he was perfectly safe from
Libbie's romantic consideration.

The boy and girl friends were then in a deep discussion of the chances,
pro and con, of Betty's Uncle Dick taking her with him to Mountain Camp
despite the imminent opening of the term at Shadyside.

"Of course there is scarcely a possibility of his doing so," Betty said
finally with hopeless mien. "Mr. Canary--Uncle Dick's friend is named
Jonathan Canary, isn't that a funny name?" she interrupted herself to ask.

"He's a bird," declared Teddy Tucker solemnly.

"Nothing romantic sounding about that name," his brother said, with a look
at Libbie. "'Jonathan Canary'--no poetry in that."

"He, he!" chuckled Ted wickedly. "Talking about poetry----"

"But we weren't!" said Bobby Littell. "We were talking about going to
Mountain Camp in the Adirondacks. Think of it--in the dead of winter!"

"Talking about poetry," steadily pursued Teddy Tucker. "You know Timothy
Derby is always gushing."

"A 'gusher,'" interposed Betty primly, "is an oil well that comes in with
a bang."

"Don't you mean it comes out with a bang?" teased Louise.

"In or out, Betty and I have seen 'em gush all right," cried Bob, as they
cantered on together along a well-defined