"Sure I'm not," he agreed cheerfully. "And I'd run away from a girl like Libbie any day. I wonder how Timothy Derby stands for her. But he's almost as mushy as a soft pumpkin!"

With this disrespectful observation Bob started off with the gray horse and Betty scrambled up the bank down which she had plunged so heedlessly.

Bobby was one of those who had dismounted at the brink of the ravine, and she held out a brown hand to Betty as the latter scrambled up the last yard or two of the steep bank and helped her to a secure footing.

"Are you all right, Betty dear?" she cried.

"No. One side of me is left," laughed Betty. "Wasn't that some slide?"

"Now, don't try to make out that you did it on purpose!" exclaimed Esther, the youngest Littell sister.

"It was too lovely for anything," sighed Libbie.

"I'm glad you think so," said Betty. "Oh! you mean what Bob did. I see. Of course he is lovely--always has been. But don't tell him so, for it utterly spoils boys if you praise them--doesn't it Bobby?"

"Of course it does," agreed Betty's particular chum, whose real name, Roberta, was seldom used even by her parents.

"I like that!" chorused the Tucker twins. "Wait till we tell Bob, Betty,"

added Tommy Tucker, shaking his head.

"If you try to slide downhill on horseback again, we'll all just 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 d.i.c.k 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 d.i.c.k 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 a.s.sisting 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 d.i.c.k 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 d.i.c.k'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 bridle-path.

"Say! I'm telling you something," exploded Teddy Tucker, who did not purpose to have his tale lost sight of. "Something about Timothy Derby."

"Oh, dear me, yes!" exclaimed Bobby. "Do tell it and get it over, Ted."

The twins both began to chuckle and Teddy had some difficulty in going on with his story. But it seemed they had been at the Derby place the evening before and Timothy had been "boring everybody to distraction," Ted said, reading "Excelsior" to the family.

"And believe me!" interjected Tommy Tucker, "that kid can elocute."

"And he's always been at it," hurried on his twin, giggling. "Here's what Mr. Derby says Timothy recited the first time he ever spoke a piece at a Sunday School concert. You know; the stuff the little mites cackle."

"How elegant are your expressions, Teddy!" remarked Louise, sighing.

But she was amused as well as the others when Ted produced a paper on which he had written down the verse Mr. Derby said his son had recited, and just as Timothy had said it!

"Listen, all of you," begged Teddy. "Now, don't laugh and spoil it all, Tom. Listen:

"'Lettuce denby uppan doing Widow Hartford N E fate, Still H E ving, still pursuing, Learn to label Aunty Waite.'"

Libbie's voice rose above the general laughter, and she was quite warm.

For Libbie's was a loyal soul.

"I don't care! I don't believe it. His father is always making fun of Timothy. He--he is cruel, I think. And, anyway, Timothy was only a little boy then."

"What did he want to label his Aunty Waite for?" demanded Bob.

"You all be pretty good," called Betty, seeing that Libbie was really getting angry. "If you aren't I'll ask Timothy and Libbie to my party at Mountain Camp and none of the rest of you shall go."

"Easy enough said, that, Betty," Bob rejoined. "You haven't very much chance of going there. But, crimpy! wouldn't it be great if Uncle d.i.c.k did take us?"

"Remember our school duties, children," drawled Louise. "'Still H E ving, still pursuing.' We must not cry for the moon."

Thus, with a great deal of laughter and good-natured chatter, the cavalcade trotted on and came finally to what Louise and Bobby said was the entrance to Bolter's Farm.

"All our horses were raised on this farm," explained Louise. "Daddy says that Lewis Bolter has the finest stock of any horseman in Virginia. Much of it is racing stock. He sells to the great stables up north. One of his men will know what to do for your gray's scratched legs, Betty."

For Betty had changed with Bob again and rode Jim, the horse that had slid down into the ravine. Betty was really sorry about the scratches and felt somehow as though she were a little to blame for the accident. She should have been more careful in guiding the gray.

Once at the great stables and paddocks, however, Betty's mind was relieved on this point. Louise had an errand from her father to Mr. Bolter and went away with Esther to interview the horse owner. Mr. Littell was a builder and constructor and he bought many work horses of Mr. Bolter's raising, as well as saddle stock.

If there was anything on four feet that Betty and Bob loved, it was a horse. In the west they had ridden almost continually; their mounts out at Flame City had been their dearest possessions and they would have been glad to bring them east, both Betty's Clover-pony and Bob's big white horse, had it been wise to do so.