For the Sake of the School by Angela Brazil (adventure books to read .TXT) 📗

"Aha! Wouldn't you like to know? What'll you give me if I tell you now?"

"Never buy pigs in pokes. It mayn't be important at all," volunteered Merle.

"Oh, indeed! Isn't it? Just wait till you hear."

"It's nothing but one of your sells," yawned Gertrude Oliver, moving so as to rest her back more comfortably against Ulyth.

"Mrs. Arnold doesn't generally spring sells upon us."

Ulyth jumped up so suddenly that Gertrude collapsed with a squeal of protest.

"Mrs. Arnold here and I never knew! Where is she?"

"Don't excite yourself. She's gone by now. She only stayed ten minutes, to see Miss Bowes, but it was ten minutes to some purpose. Do you know what she's actually proposed?"

Addie's listeners were as eager now as they had been languid before.

"Go ahead, can't you?" urged Lizzie.

"Well, the whole school's to go camping for three days."

This indeed was news!

"Stunning!"

"Spiffing!"

"Ripping!"

"Scrumptious!" burst in a chorus from the elated four.

"Details, please," added Ulyth. "When and where, and how, and why?"

"Is it a Camp-fire business?" asked Lizzie.

"Of course it is or Mrs. Arnold wouldn't be getting it up. It's happened this way. The Llangarmon and Elwyn Bay detachments of Boy Scouts are to camp at Llyn Gwynedd for ten days early in June. Mr. Arnold has the arranging of it all. And Mrs. Arnold suggested that the tents might just as easily be hired a few days sooner, and we could use them before the boys came. It's such a splendid opportunity. It would be too expensive to have everything sent down on purpose just for us, but when they're there we can hire the camp for very little extra. It's the carriage and erecting that cost so much. Miss Bowes, I believe, hummed and ha-ed a little, but Teddie just tumbled to the idea and persuaded the Rainbow to clinch it."

"Good old Teddie! I believe it's the tragedy of her life that she can't live altogether in the open air. She adores Red Cross Work."

"The teachers are all to come to camp; they're as excited as you please about it. It was Miss Lodge who told me that Mrs. Arnold was here, and I rushed down the drive and caught her just for a second."

This indeed was an event in the annals of the school. Never since the Camp-fire League was started had its members found any opportunity of sampling life under canvas. They had practised a little camp cookery down by the stream, but their experiments had not gone much farther than frying eggs and bacon or roasting potatoes in hot ashes, and they were yearning to try their hands at gipsies' stews and gallipot soups. With Mrs. Arnold for leader they expected a three days' elysium. Even Miss Teddington, they knew, would rise to the occasion and play trumps. Llyn Gwynedd was a small lonely lake about six miles away, in the heart of the mountains beyond Penllwyd and Glyder Garmon. It was reached from The Woodlands by a track across the moors, but it communicated by high road with Capelcefn station, so that tents, camp-furniture, and provisions could be sent up by a motor-lorry. The ground was hired from a local farmer, who undertook to supply milk, butter, and eggs to the best of his ability, and to bring meat and fresh vegetables from Capelcefn as required. To cater for a whole school up in the wilds is a task from which many Principals would shrink, and Miss Bowes might be forgiven if she had at first demurred at the suggestion. But, with Mr. Arnold's practical experience to help her, she gave her orders and embarked (not without a few tremors) upon the proceeding.

"If the mountain air makes you so hungry you eat up two days' provisions in one, it means you'll have to fast on the third day," she assured the girls. "I'm sending up what I hope will be sufficient. It's like victualling a regiment. Of course we shan't go at all if it's wet."

Mr. Arnold, who very kindly volunteered to see that the camp was properly set up and in thorough working order before the school took possession, superintended the erection of the tents and reported that all was in apple-pie condition and only waiting for its battalion. On 2nd June, therefore, a very jolly procession started off from The Woodlands. In navy skirts and sports coats, tricolor ties, straw hats, and decorated with numerous badges and small flags, the girls felt like a regiment of female Territorials. Each carried her kit on her back in a home-made knapsack containing her few personal necessities, and knife, spoon, fork, and enamelled tin mug. A band of tin whistles and mouth organs led the way, playing a valiant attempt at "Caller Herrin'". The teachers also were prepared for business. Miss Teddington, who had done climbs in Switzerland, came in orthodox costume with nailed boots and a jaunty Tyrolean hat with a piece of edelweiss stuck in the front. Miss Lodge wore a full-length leather coat and felt hat in which she looked ready to defy a waterspout or a tornado. Miss Moseley, who owned to an ever-present terror of bulls, grasped an iron-spiked walking-stick, and Miss Davis had a First Aid wallet slung across her back. In the girls' opinion Miss Bowes shirked abominably. Instead of venturing on the six-mile walk she had caught the morning train to Capelcefn, and was going to hire a car at the Royal Hotel and drive up to the lake with the provisions. Mrs. Arnold, who, with her husband, had taken rooms at the farm for a few days, was already on the spot, and would be ready to receive the travellers when they arrived.

On the whole it was a glorious morning, though a few ill-omened clouds lingered like a night-cap round Penllwyd. Larks were singing, cuckoos calling, bluebells made the woods seem a reflection of the sky, and the gorse was ablaze on the common. The walk was collar-work at