The Outdoor Girls in Florida; Or, Wintering in the Sunny South

Thus cried Mollie, who stood at the bow of the _Gem_ with a boathook in her grasp, while the motor craft approached the rude raft on which lay the body of an unconscious youth....

Grace Ford tried to repress her emotion, but the cause of her tears was evidently too recent, or the effort at self-control too much for her, for she gave way to another outburs...

"A--a sand bar," faltered Grace, sinking back among some cushions that matched her dress wonderfully well. Mollie said later that Grace always tried to match something, even if...

"Oh, father!" gasped Grace, as she slipped into his waiting arms. Hardly a greeting did she give to Uncle Isaac, but perhaps this was on account of having spoken to him over the...

They both seemed to depend on the "Little Captain" in this emergency. As for Mollie, her dark eyes flashed, and she looked at Betty with a nod of encouragement. Whatever happene...

Betty, as well as Grace, Mollie and Amy, seemed much taken aback by the earnest words of Mrs. Belton. The wife of the labor contractor seemed under stress of some excitement, as...

Grace was in tears when her father finished reading Will's pathetic letter. Nor were the eyes of her chums altogether dry, for they all liked Will, who seemed as much a brother...

For one of the very few times in her life when confronted by an emergency the "Little Captain" did not know quite what to do. Grace clung to Betty, murmuring over and over again:

Grace's announcement caused a flutter of excitement among her chums, and Mr. Ford's face showed his pleasure and surprise. But a moment later he had steeled his features into a...

"And to think that in a few more days we'll leave all this behind us--all the cold, the icicles, the snow, the biting winds--leave it all, and sail into a land of sunshine and o...

Grace burst out crying. She said she knew it was silly, and not at all what an outdoor girl should do, and, very contritely afterward, she told the others how sorry she was that...

The Loon stood irresolute for a few seconds. He seemed to want to rush off into the dark woods again, and evidently expected the girls to follow him. But, though they were very...

Betty Nelson reached the bank of the river and stopped. She could go no farther for the muddy water stretched itself at her feet. But her boat--the trim little _Gem_--was moving...

For a few seconds it was like a tableau, the strange young man, more ragged than before (if that were possible) standing in the midst of the clearing, and gazing as though spell...

"Oh, just the usual kind," replied the overseer. "I don't want to alarm you, and you needn't be afraid. They're mostly a cowardly set that always congregate around where a lot o...

Amy's announcement--unexpected as it was--had two effects. It dispelled, for a time, the gloom that had come with the news of Will Ford's disappearance, and it gave the girls so...

The girls and Mr. and Mrs. Stonington were driving in a big canopy-topped carriage along a Florida road, toward the orange grove on the outskirts of the town of Bentonville. The...

"What shall we do?" whispered Grace, glancing at Betty, who stood at the wheel, seemingly as calm and unperturbed as though she had the _Gem_ out for a little run on Rainbow Lak...

"What--what are we going to do?" gasped Grace. She, as Betty said afterward, seemed always to be the first to ask questions that were hard to answer in an emergency. "They--they...

Grace and Amy were clinging to each other now in the middle of the boat. Betty had turned about at their exclamations, and Mollie was gazing curiously into the swirling water.

The girls need have had no fears. The youth in the boat seemed to know what he was doing. He was pulling up the anchor rope now, and a moment later he had the grapple in his sco...

"Why?" asked Betty, as she guided her craft to the center of the stream. It was lighter there, for they were not so much under the overhanging trees with their festoons of moss....

Tom Osborne, on the way back in the _Gem_ with the girls and Mr. Stonington, told his story. He had prepared the luncheon, and, seeing the girls going out on the little neck of...

Trailing vines hung from great trees on either side of the path. Large bunches of Spanish moss festooned other monarchs of the forest, which seemed gloomy indeed as the girls ga...

Taken by surprise by the sudden rush of Mr. Hammond and his men those in charge of the Everglade camp, and the miserable creatures they held in virtual bondage, offered little r...