CHAPTER IX

A DAY WITH THE BOBBIES

A shrill whistle shocked the girls back to consciousness.

"What's that?" asked Cleo.

"Our 'get-up' call," replied Corene. "Mackey's whistle. At the big camp we always heard the bugles next."

Whether woodnymphs were listening in that tent, or whether Corene's remark provoked an uncanny echo, at that very moment a bugle blast sounded somewhere!

"Another serenade!" exclaimed Julia, settling into her new comfort, quite as if the bugle-blow were permission to defer rising time.

Miss Mackey was already dressed for the ten minute exercise drill. "The girls at Norm have no bugles, so we cannot be indebted to them this time," she said.

"Maybe it's friend cow bringing back my shoe," chuckled Cleo.

Came the uncertain notes of the bugle again:

"We can't get 'em up--up--up!" it stuttered frantically, unable to return to the first notes to repeat the strain.

The girls shuffled into slippers and bathrobes, the regular drill costumes, and Grace ventured to poke her head outside the tent.

"The boys!" she exclaimed. "There they go scamping off. Just gave us our first call, to tease, of course. Well, I'm glad something got Benny up. I wouldn't wonder if the bugler blew him out first."

"They're gone," repeated Miss Mackin good-naturedly, "and I suppose they think it was a great joke. Grace, couldn't we borrow that bugle?"

"I'll see; I think Clee could blow it; she does so well with a bicycle pump."

Presently the Bobbies were outside; having reverently raised their colors, they raced off to the "drill field," a little place cleared of brush and safe from the eyes even of Benny's bugle squad. There, in bathing suits, they went through the setting up exercises, warranted to do everything in the way of providing health and beauty for Girl Scouts.

From that they raced off to the little cove in the lake, took a dip, which they would loved to have prolonged into a swim had Mackey not blown that police whistle; then back to camp, then washed and dressed and jumped out to their benches set around the new boarded table.

Washing between the trees, where twin cedars or other saplings were used to hold the basin bench, proved novel to those little girls, used to the white enamelled bathrooms at home; but it was fun, even if Julia did spill "every drop of the pitcher full of fresh water" and have to borrow from Margaret; and although Grace found her soap so slippery, it would roll off into the pine needles and when rescued look like a new sort of fuzzy-wuzzy chestnut. Altogether it was fun and frolic, and "good for what ails you," as Cleo commented, when Madaline took to preaching about the wrongs of civilization.

"It's all nonsense and mummy says so, for us to want hot and cold water all the time," she declaimed from her perch on a stump where the towel was clear of the ground. "And this is good for us. Will make----"

"Men of us," finished Cleo, who always loved to tease chubby, baby Madaline.

Corene had charge of breakfast, Julia was fireman, this picturesque duty appealing to her imaginative nature, and as she poked the embers in the stone furnace (of her own building) and sang, "Boil and bubble, toil and trouble," she must have imagined the witches in Macbeth were stirring things up with their forked wands.

"Hungry! I'm starved!" declared Margaret. "Can't seem to remember when I ate last. Please send me down that dish of apples."

"Let us adhere to something of our regular table manners, girls," said Miss Mackin from her place at the head of the board. "We don't want the home folk to be blaming us for lost manners, when we go back. I know it does seem like fun to be free from most restrictions, but habits are so easily formed, and we can't blame the home people for wanting us to go back to them better in every way." Miss Mackin never dictated, she just "put things up to the girls" in a very pleasant manner.

Corene was serving the cereal while Julia kept things hot over the picturesque stone furnace.

"If you have enough cooked now we will all eat together, Corey," said the director. "Just bring your coffee pot over here. I'll pour!" She smiled broadly at that use of the social term.

"Let me cook the bacon," begged Cleo. "I've heard daddy talk so often of camp bacon." Her request was granted, and presently the bacon was sizzling from its wire string that ran from one end to the other of the furnace, each end being hooked on the iron poles, little gas pipes set up in the stones, with homemade hooks of tightly wound wire, the entire contrivance representing Julia's idea of a camp "skillet" or "dangling spider."

The bacon broiled very quickly, for the embers had reached a point of concentrated heat, and when Cleo forked her bacon off the wire its aroma might easily have attracted envious comments from the girls at Camp Norm.

"Did anything ever taste so good?" exclaimed Margaret.

"Shall we have baked potatoes for lunch?" asked Madaline, sending her cup down to Louise to have it refilled with milk.

"I'm to cook lunch," replied Cleo, "and you may help, Madie. I know you always did love to bake things. Remember the day you burned the big angel cake?"

Madie remembered, but claimed a broader knowledge of the culinary art now.

The day's programme provided something for every hour, and after breakfast it was to be a swim. The weather was ideal for this, their first experience in the "wide open," so that a swim was eagerly anticipated now.

"Fix your bunks; inspection first, you know," ordered the leader.

How jolly it was! And how worth while to do things this way, which was the right way for this particular occasion?

The beds and their surroundings passed the director's inspection, and then came the swim.

"We are all good swimmers," Julia insisted. "I don't really think we need have Mackey with us, if she should want to do something else."

"Oh, I go with you," replied Mackey. "The water is a matter of particular responsibility, and being good swimmers would not excuse me in case of accident."

"Mother always feels that way and insists on being along with us," added Louise reflectively.

The dock was crowded when they reached the "bathing grounds." They might have "gone in" at their own beach in the cove, but the rocks around that corner were jagged, and Mackey decided it would be better to take the dives from the regular springboard off the landing.

"I wish we would see Peg," Grace said to Cleo. "I wonder where she goes in?"

"Never saw her in a bathing suit," replied Cleo, "but I'm sure she's a regular fish in the water. We'll ask her to come with us next time we see her."

"Do you suppose she works at anything?" Grace asked again.

"Why! How queer that you should think she works?" charged Cleo.

"Well, she does something. She wouldn't ride away so early every morning just for pleasure; and Benny says he has seen her so often."

A call to line up for a running dive interrupted the conversation, and presently the Bobbies quite forgot Peg, in their joy of a real swim in Lake Hocomo.

"Lots better than the ocean," chugged Louise, just coming in from a long pull. "I never could try this stroke in the big waves," and she dove back again to try the "crawl" in the smooth yet pleasantly warmed waters; for the lake was never very cold at the big open basin that surrounded this point.

"And no tide to worry about," added Margaret.

However dear was the ocean when at the ocean they tarried, the Scouts had a happy faculty of shifting their affection, and now it was the "wonderful lake!"

Miss Mackin was watching the swimmers and she quickly observed those most proficient.

"Madaline, don't go outside the float," she cautioned. "That's a pretty good swim for a little girl, I think."

The smallest Bobbie turned to obey when those nearest her saw her give a sudden jerk and then she screamed!

"Oh, something has got me! Quick!"

Miss Mackin only had to put her hand out to reach the frightened child, but Madaline's face showed pain and the director could not at once seem to assist her.

"My foot! Something's got my foot!" she cried.

"A crab!" exclaimed Grace, swimming quickly to Madaline's aid.

"Not in the lake!" protested Cleo.

By this time Miss Mackin had succeeded in freeing the very much frightened little Scout, and she was now leading her ashore. Madaline had drawn her foot between two rocks that came together so closely they formed a very formidable trap, and the only way a victim could get out was to back out of the wider end of the opening. There were rocks only on the lake bottom near shore, and most bathers soon became familiar with their location.

As if that trifling incident opened the way for further "frowns of Fate" the girls in the water presently had reason to scamper.

The criticized blondes, they who ran the "Bug," that deformed motor boat, now deliberately turned the craft into the line of the swimmers. At first it seemed accidental, but when Grace and Julia turned in another direction and the "Bug" cut after them, they realized that the girls in the hideous striped bathing suits were giving them a chase.

Miss Mackin saw this from ashore and ran along the dock to the end of the pier. She called from there, and the girls in the queer squat boat seemed to take heed, for presently the boat made a complete circle and shot out again into the open lake.

"Come in, girls," called the director. "Time's up!"

"Oh, not one more swim?" begged Grace. But Corene said "no," and everyone realized Corene's experience with a director qualified her to dictate, so reluctantly they waded in and were soon back in camp, dressing for dinner.

"What do you think of those girls racing after us with their old motor boat?" Louise asked. They were looking rosy and feeling "frisky" after their swim, and the preparations for dinner (they had decided to have the main meal at noon), were aggravating in their appetizing lure.

"I think," replied Julia, "we will have to look out for those ladies," she wanted to say something more "descriptive," but let it go at "ladies."

"Why look out for them?" pressed Grace. She may have scented danger and "warmed to it," for Grace had the reputation of daring and courage.

"Well, they didn't seem to be 'cutting up' exactly, and they did steer their old bug-boat straight after us," reasoned Julia. "Wonder where they stop?"

"I saw them on the grounds of the Fayette the other day," said Madaline, "and one was in a hammock, with her feet sticking out and you could see her green silk stockings all the way from the corner."

"Must have terrible long----" The dinner gong interrupted Grace's sentence, for Corene was hammering her bread knife on the big tin tray with such startling results, that the very birds took fright and left the grounds before gathering the crumbs that might come to them from the table of the Bobbies.