Grace, a thin, wiry child of the wriggling type, had successfully clambered up the rope almost to the beam overhead and was now surveying the gallery with lofty compa.s.sion, which included a lively appreciation of her mother's uneasiness.

"Oh, Grace!" shrilled the thin woman. "Get down this instant! Or do you want me to bring you a ladder?"

An appreciative giggle arose from some of the girls below. Grace turned rather red around her ears, and began to descend. It was one thing to make her mother marvel; she did not want her "act" to be turned to ridicule.

"They look real pretty--now don't they?" admitted Mrs. Pendleton, loftily, after surveying the gymnasium for some time through her lorgnette. "Lily's dress cost us a deal of trouble. But she looks well in it. She's well developed for her age and--thank goodness!--she has a _chic_ way with her.

"I thought we never would get the suit to fit her. And she changed her shoes three times," added the society matron. "Finally I told her if she was going to have nervous prostration getting ready to take physical culture, she'd better wait and take it when she was convalescent."

"I hope Lluella will be careful of her hands," said the fleshy lady on Mrs. Belding's right. "She's always bruising or cutting her fingers.

Just like her aunt. Her aunt always had to wear gloves doing her housework."

"There! they are going to march," cried the thin lady, as Mrs. Case blew her whistle and the girl on the rope slid the last few feet to the floor. "Grace is down, thank goodness!"

"Her music teacher says Grace's ear is a regular gift--she keeps such good time."

"I'm sure no sensible parent would ever have _bought_ those ears,"

whispered Mrs. Pendleton to Mrs. Belding. "They must have been a gift," for those organs on the agile Grace were painfully prominent.

"But she had _such_ a pretty smile when she looked up at her mother just now," whispered the kind-hearted Mrs. Belding.

"That reminds me," said the society matron--though why it should have reminded her n.o.body knows! "That reminds me, my Lily is crazy to go camping--positively crazy!"

"I know," sighed Mrs. Belding. "Laura is determined, too. And her father approves and has overruled all _my_ objections."

"Oh, it's not that with me at all," said Mrs. Pendleton, briskly. "I'm glad enough to have the child go. She's too much advanced for her age, anyway. If she spends this summer at Newport, and Bar Harbor, and one or two other places where I positively _must_ appear, I'll never be able to get her back into school this fall.

"It ages a mother so to have a growing daughter--and one that is so forward as Lily," said this selfish lady, fretfully. "Lily thinks she is grown up now. No. I approve of her going with a lot of little girls into camp. And she wants to go with your Laura's crowd, Mrs.

Belding."

"I'm sure--Laura would be pleased," said Mrs Belding, sweetly, without an idea that she was laying up trouble in store for Mother Wit.

"Oh, then, I can leave it with you, dear Mrs. Belding?" cried Mrs.

Pendleton, with uncanny eagerness. "You will arrange it?"

"Why--er--I presume Laura and her friends would have no objection to another of their schoolmates joining them. I understand Mrs. Morse will chaperon them----"

"And quite a proper person for that office, too," agreed Mrs.

Pendleton. "I presume they will take along a maid."

"Oh! I do not know," said Mrs. Belding, beginning to feel somewhat worried now. "I imagine the girls expect to do for themselves----"

"Oh! I will send a maid with Lily. At least, I will pay the wages of one who will do for all the girls--in a way."

She bustled away to find Lily after the march. Mrs. Belding waited for her daughter in more or less trepidation. It had suddenly crossed her mind that Lily Pendleton was seldom at her house with the friends that Mother Wit gathered about her.

CHAPTER IV

"LONESOME LIZ"

"Oh, galloping gra.s.shoppers!" gasped Bobby Hargrew, clinging tight to Laura and Nellie Agnew in the dressing-room. "Do you hear what she says?"

"What language, Bob!" said Nellie, in horror. "How _can_ you?"

"Of whom are you speaking?" asked Laura, with an admonishing look.

"That Lil Pendleton. The gall of her!"

"Stop, Bob!" commanded Laura. "You talk like a street urchin."

"I don't care if I talk like a sea urchin," complained the smaller girl. "She says she's going with us."

"Where?" asked Nell.

"Camping."

"Who?" exclaimed Laura, promptly.

"That Pendleton girl. Says her mother just told her. _Your_ mother said so, Laura Belding. So there!"

"Why--why----"

"I don't want to complain of your mother, Laura," said the grocer's daughter, "but it seems too bad we can't pick and choose whom we'll have go camping in our crowd."

"Mother doesn't understand! I am sure she never meant to _make_ us take Lil if we didn't want her."

"And surely we _don't_," declared the doctor's daughter, with more emphasis than she usually used in commenting upon any subject.

"Let's put the rollers under her and let her zip," exclaimed the slangy Bobby.

"If Gee Gee should hear you," laughed Laura, referring to one of the very strict lady teachers of Central High, Miss Grace Gee Carrington.

"She's too busy with Margit Salgo--Beg pardon!" exclaimed Bobby.

"Margaret Carrington, as she will in future be known. Gee Gee has scarcely called me down this week."

"Now, if it was Margit who wanted to go," sighed Nell Agnew, speaking of the half-Gypsy girl who had just come under the care of Miss Carrington.

"Or Eve Sitz," added Bobby. "But Eve says she gets out-of-door work enough on the farm in the summer. Camping out is no fun for her."

"I don't know what to say about Lily," began Laura. "I cannot understand mother promising such a thing. If anybody should decide, it should be Jess' mother. _She_ is going with us."

"Oh! there's another thing," interrupted the fly-away Bobby. "If Lil goes, she's going to take along a lady's maid."

"_What_?" gasped the other girls.