Off for the mountains

“Sunrise Camp! What next, pray tell me?” sighed Miss Helen Campbell.

“But it doesn’t mean getting up at sunrise, Cousin Helen,” Billie Campbell assured her. “Although Papa says we would like it, once we got started. Campers always do rise with the sun. It’s the proper thing to do.”

“But why do they give it that uncivilized name?” continued Miss Campbell in an injured tone of voice. “Why not Sunset Camp or Meridian Camp or even Moonrise Camp? There is nothing restful to me in the name of ‘Sunrise.’”

“It will be restful, indeed it will, dear cousin, once you are used to the life, and it couldn’t be called any of those other names because they would not be appropriate. You see there is a wonderful view of the sunrise from the camp, and every morning if you wake early enough you see a beautiful pink light all over the sky and you wonder where the sun is; and suddenly he comes shooting up from behind the tallest mountain in the range across the valley, and it’s really quite late by then. He has been up ever so long, but he’s been hiding behind the mountains.”

“And we are to sleep on the ground under those flimsy tents, I suppose?” asked Miss Campbell, who was not taking very kindly to the camping proposition.

“No, no,” protested her young cousin, laughing, “you’re thinking of soldiers, and they do have cots. This camp is a log house, a really beautiful log house. There is one immense room without any ceiling, and you look straight up through the beams into the roof. Papa says it’s splendid.”

Miss Campbell bestowed upon Billie a tolerant, suffering smile.

“And back of that room,” continued Billie, speaking quickly, “is a long sleeping porch that can be partitioned off into bedrooms ”

“No protection from rain and wild animals, I suppose?” put in Miss Campbell sadly.

“Oh, yes. There is a roof overhead and a floor underneath, and it’s all enclosed with wire netting to keep out mosquitoes. It can’t rain in far enough to wet the beds and, of course, nothing else matters ”

“Clothes?” groaned the little lady.

“But khaki skirts, cousin, and rubber-soled shoes and pongee blouses, water couldn’t injure things like that.”

“I went camping once forty years ago,” went on Miss Campbell, without seeming to notice Billie’s reply. “It was terrible, I assure you, it was quite too dreadful. One night there was a storm, and the tents that were not blown away by the high winds were swamped by rain. Our clothes all mildewed, and the flies! I shall never forget the disgusting flies, they were everywhere.”

“This camp couldn’t possibly be blown away even by the strongest wind,” broke in Billie, ready to refute every argument, “and the screens make it just as comfortable as your own home would be.”

“How far is it from anywhere?” demanded Miss Campbell suddenly.

Billie hesitated.

“It’s twenty-five miles, but there is a good road from the railroad station and the ‘Comet’ can take us across in no time. You see, there is a little village in the valley at the foot of our mountain, and in summer a ’bus runs twice a day with passengers and the mail, so the road must be fairly good. Papa says lots of automobiles go over it.”

“Twenty-five miles,” groaned Miss Campbell.

“Twenty-five miles from a telegraph station ”

“But there is no one for you to telegraph to if Papa and I are with you, dear Cousin, is there?” asked Billie ingenuously.

Miss Campbell’s expression softened. Nothing pleased her so much as for Billie to make one family of the three. The young cousin had become such a fixture in her home that she had grown quite jealous of Duncan Campbell’s possessive airs with his daughter.

“One would think she really belonged to him more than to me,” she would exclaim at such times, with some unreasonableness it must be admitted.

But it was plain that the little spinster’s resolutions against camping were beginning to crumble.

“We are not to eat on the ground, then, or drink coffee from tin cups, or sleep in our clothes, or be bitten to death by mosquitoes, and finally exterminated by wild animals?”

Billie laughed joyously. She knew by these extravagant remarks that her cousin had been won over.

“None of those things,” she cried. “We are to lead a comfortable, beautiful rustic life, and I know you’ll just love it. There are lakes, cousin, exquisite, beautiful little gems of lakes; and trails all through the pine forests, and the walking isn’t a bit difficult ”

“Khaki skirts, did you say?”

“Yes, and sneakers.”

“What are they, child?”

“Rubber-soled shoes to keep you from slipping.”

Miss Campbell sighed.

“And at my age!” she said aloud, answering some unspoken thought. “Tell your father I accept, but it’s the last straw, and I may never see my comfortable old home again.”

Billie did not pause to disprove this dejected statement. She kissed her relative with the wild abandon of eighteen, rushed from the room and was down the stairs in a breathlessly short space of time.

“She’s going! She’s going!” she cried, rushing into the drawing-room, where her three friends were anxiously awaiting news, and Mr. Campbell, almost as anxious himself, was pacing the floor, his hands thrust deep into his pockets.

“Good work, little daughter!” he said, pausing in his walk. “I knew you could win her over if anybody could, although last night I was afraid we hadn’t the ghost of a show. She was dead set against it. The word ‘camp’ alone seemed to make her wild.”

“But, you see, she thought it was tents and flies and mosquitoes and tin cups.”

Mr. Campbell smiled.

“I think we won’t tell her any more, now that she has made up her mind. We’ll give her a little surprise. Call the camp a log hut and let it go at that.”

“Now, about clothes ” began Nancy Brown, and her friends all smiled. “Well, one must have clothes, even on a camping trip. Don’t you think a blue corduroy would be attractive, with a touch of coral pink in the silk tie, say; and high russet walking boots the kind that lace, you know ”

“They must have rubber soles,” put in Billie, “no matter what the tops are.”

“And a straw hat in the natural color, with a brim that droops slightly, and a pheasant’s tail feather, slightly at one side ”

There was another burst of laughter at this juncture, and Mr. Campbell joined in.

“Miss Nancy,” he said, “I’m afraid you’ll have everything from hedge hogs to wood choppers at your feet if you make yourself so attractive in silks and velvets and russets ”

“Nothing perishable,” protested Nancy. “It will be quite suitable, of course. It’s a mountain costume I saw in a French fashion magazine, and it was really intended for an Alpine climber; only it was much fancier. The French lady in the picture wore a lace jabot and high-heeled shoes, and she carried an Alpine stock with a pink bow tied just below the crook.”

“Was the skirt hobble?” demanded Billie.

“It sounds to me like a Little Bo-Peep costume,” put in Mary Price.

“I think one should dress quite quietly on a camping party,” observed Elinor Butler.

Mr. Campbell seized his hat.

“My only advice to you, ladies,” he announced as he reached the door, “is to wear shoes that won’t turn your ankles; skirts that give you plenty of leeway for climbing, and shirts that may be easily washed, because laundries are not abundant in those regions. As for hats,” he finished, “you’ll probably not wear any after the first day, even the latest thing from the Alps trimmed with the tail feather of a pheasant. As for colors, the first time you go camping you’ll probably let your fancy run riot and wear Assyrian purple or crushed strawberry. But the next time, you’ll pass right down the line until you get to brown, because you will know by that time that brown fades brown. If campers had been born wild animals instead of human beings, Nature would surely have provided them with brown coats for utilitarian as well as protective purposes.”

“I thought we could just wear old clothes,” put in Mary Price, doubtfully. “I didn’t know people had costumes made for camping.”

Mr. Campbell thrust his genial, handsome face back into the room.

“Camping clothes are like bathing suits,” he remarked. “After the first wetting or so, they all look alike.”

“I’m sure blue corduroy will last,” cried Nancy. “The man at the store said it was unfadeable.”

“You mean that curly-haired clerk who wears the ruby scarf pin?” laughed Billie. “What’s his name?”

“Delosia Moxley,” answered Elinor. “He is always giving Nancy pointers about the latest modes. He was responsible for that Spanish veil she would wear last winter ”

“He was not,” interrupted Nancy. “He merely told me they were the fashion in New York. I needn’t have bought it if I hadn’t wanted to.”

“I suppose he furnished that French lady’s Alpine costume, too, didn’t he, Nancy Bell?”

Nancy smiled good-naturedly. She never really minded being teased about her elaborate taste in dress.

“His taste is extremely good,” she said. “He expects to run a millinery shop in a year or so. He says he can trim hats charmingly.”

“My word!” exclaimed Billie. “I suppose his mother will make your suit and he’ll pin the feather on the hat, and between them they will equip you to climb the Adirondacks. But, oh, Nancy, I implore you to explain to Mrs. Moxley that hobbles don’t go in the mountains.”

“She understands,” replied Nancy with much dignity. “She is going to make me the very latest thing in mountain-climbing suits, and she gets all her fashions straight from New York.”

Her friends exchanged covert glances and said nothing. Nancy’s conferences with Mrs. Moxley, the dressmaker, were a source of endless amusement to them. It was Mrs. Moxley who had made Nancy’s graduating costume that June, and never had been seen on the platform of West Haven High School such a fashionable toilette. It had a hobble skirt and a fancy little train that flopped about Nancy’s feet like a beaver’s tail, and at the reception afterwards the boys had teased her until she left in tears.

Two weeks had passed since graduation and our Motor Maids were just beginning to feel the results of their hard winter’s work. It had been a tough pull to catch up with their classes after the return from Japan. There had been no gayeties for them during the Christmas holidays, only continuous hard study, and for weeks afterwards Billie and Nancy and Elinor were tutored every afternoon. Mary Price, the best student of the three, had outstripped them, and in the end had carried off first honors and a scholarship besides. But after the excitement of finals, the four friends had collapsed like pricked balloons. Billie, mortified at what she considered a weakness in her character, had not been able to throw off a deep cold contracted in the spring. Mary Price was limp and white; Elinor had grown mortally thin, and even Nancy had lost her roundness, and her usually plump face was peaked and pale.

“My child needs mountain air!” said Mr. Campbell on one of his flying trips to West Haven. “She must not be in a hotel, and she must have her friends with her.”

With characteristic energy he had set to work to find a place somewhere in the mountains, and he had made three trips before he satisfied himself that “Sunrise Camp” in the Adirondacks, to let furnished, was exactly what he had been searching for. The owners had gone abroad and were glad to rent it at a low price.

To “Sunrise Camp” therefore, after due preparation, Miss Helen Campbell, the Motor Maids and Mr. Campbell, who went up to install them, departed. At the station next day they found the “Comet,” still attired in his blue suit acquired in Japan, in charge of a chauffeur from a nearby hotel. Along twenty-five miles of mountainous road the faithful car carried them, patiently climbing the last steep grade which led to a kind of shelf in the mountain whereon stood “Sunrise Camp.”