“We’ll each share a third of a brother with you, Nat,” offered Mabel.
“Which is very kind of you, maiden-of-the-green-corn,” replied the breath-of-the-pine-tree, with a laugh that showed her white, even teeth.
There was much to do. Fortunately the academy where the boys and girls attended, closed two weeks earlier that term to allow of extensive repairs to be made to the building, so that it was possible to spend part of the rare month of June in the woods.
For the boys, who had often gone camping, it was not so difficult, but to the girls the work of arranging for tents, cots, a camping site, the necessary cooking utensils, an oil stove, and seeing about other matters came rather hard.
“A camp fire is all right,” declared Jack, when he had been appealed to, “and probably you’ll want one every night, to sit about and talk, but for cooking, unless you have to—nix! The smoke gets into your eyes, no matter which side of it you get on, and in rainy weather it’s out of the question.
“I know it can be used, and I’ve gotten up a dinner of six courses on an open fire, with two stones for the sides and a sheet of iron for the top, but if you don’t want to spend all your time feeling and smelling like a smoked ham, take an oil stove. It’s not so romantic, but you’ll have time for more real romance with it for you’ll have more time for the woods and water.”
And the girls had followed his advice, in which the other boys concurred. Then came the matter of arranging for the camping-site, which they hired from a man who owned considerable property on the shores of the lake—the same man from whom the boys engaged their location.
The two camps would be about a quarter of a mile apart, and, as the lake shore curved, and as the boys had a small dock built out on a point of land, they could view the girls’ tents from that vantage-place—or they would be able to when the tents were erected.
The task of arranging for tents for the girls, one to cook in and another as sleeping quarters had been rendered more easy from the fact that a party of young people who made a practice of going to the lake did not intend to do so this season. They advertised their outfit for hire, and, on the advice of the boys, Natalie and her chums took it.