ngly out of the open door
that led to the porch. "Oh, I wish," she said, "I wish the biscuits
could be done and eaten all in five minutes. Amy, did you put the eggs
in?" she demanded, and Amy, who had been gazing out of the window,
scuttled out to the kitchen obediently.

The girls had nearly finished breakfast, when there was a sound of
voices outside the door, and a moment later the boys burst in upon them.

"Hello!" said Allen, evidently surprised. "I didn't expect to see you
for another hour."

"Say, those biscuits look good," said Roy. "I should say biscuit," he
corrected himself. "Say, Betty, do you happen to have any more of those
around?"

"No, and you don't get this one, either. It belongs to Amy," said Betty
decidedly. "She has had only three and I made four apiece."

Frank was just about to protest when she added compromisingly: "I'll
make some more for lunch."

"When is lunch?" inquired Will practically. "Twelve o'clock?"

"No, about one," Mollie answered. "We couldn't possibly eat before
then."

Allen had been talking to Betty in an undertone, and now he broke into
the conversation with: "Betty says she wants to see our camp. Who cares
to go along?"

There was a clamorous assent followed by a faint little protest from
Grace. "Don't you think we had better wash the dishes first?" she asked.

"Oh, hang the dishes!" said Frank, inelegantly. "Remember we are
camping."

"We'll wash them up with the lunch dishes," Betty compromised, then
added, with a sly little glance in Allen's direction: "We'll make the
boys wipe them for us."

CHAPTER XI

A JOLLY TRIP

The girls and the boys, laughingly driving Mrs. Irving before them,
fairly tumbled down the shallow steps in their eagerness to feel the
soft grass under their feet. As Betty said, it was a glorious day, a
typical day in early August, when a soft breeze tempers the heat of the
scorching sun, and sets the trees to murmuring.

The spicy air, sweet with the intoxicating scent of damp, moist earth
and blossoming flowers, went to their heads like wine and they danced
down the path that led through the woods on feet that scarcely touched
the ground.

Soon they emerged from the dense shadows of the wood into the small
clearing which was thick and mossy under foot, and there, nestling among
the trees, were the two tents the boys had so laboriously constructed.

"Oh, it is ideal!" cried Mollie, delightedly, as they stopped for a
moment on