‘don’t stand there mooning—or sunning—for ever! I thought there was a gopher in this tent last night. I heard something scratching, and I thought it was the dog outside; but just look at these two holes almost under Laura’s pillow!’
‘Let’s fill them up, cover them over—anything!’ gasped Bell. ‘Laura will never sleep here another night if she sees them.’
‘Nobody insured Laura against gophers,’ said Polly. ‘She must take the fortunes of war.’
‘I wouldn’t wake her,’ said Margery. ‘She didn’t sleep well, and her face is flushed. Come, or we shall be late for breakfast.’
When they returned, fresh and rosy, from their bath, there was a stir of life in all the tents. Pancho had come from the stage-station with mail; an odour of breakfast issued from the kitchen, where Hop Yet was humming a fragment of Chinese song, that ran something like this,—not loud, but unearthly enough, as Bell used to say, to spoil almost any cooking:—
Dicky was abroad, radiant in a new suit of clothes, and Elsie pushed her golden head out between the curtains, and proclaimed herself strong enough for a wrestling-match with any boy or man about the camp.
But they found Laura sitting on the edge of her straw bed, directly over the concealed gopher-holes, a mirror in her hand and an expression of abject misery on her countenance.
‘What’s the matter?’ cried the girls in one breath. But they needed no answer, as she turned her face towards the light, for it was plainly a case of poison-oak—one eye almost closed, and the cheek scarlet and swollen.
‘Where do you suppose you got it?’ asked Bell.
‘Oh, I don’t know. It’s everywhere; so I don’t see how I ever hoped to escape it. Yet I’ve worn gloves every minute. I think I must have touched it when I went up the mountain trail with Jack. I’m a perfect fright already, and I suppose it has only begun.’
‘Is it very painful?’ asked Polly, sympathetically. ‘Oh, you do look so funny, I can hardly help laughing, but I’m as sorry as I can be.’
‘I should expect you to laugh—you generally do,’ retorted Laura. ‘No, it’s not painful yet; but I don’t care about that—it’s looking so ridiculous. I wonder if Dr. Winship could send me home. I wish now that I had gone with Scott, for I can’t be penned up in this tent a week.’
‘Oh, it won’t hurt you to go out,’ said Bell, ‘and you can lie in the sitting-room. Just wait, and let mamma try and cure you. She’s a famous doctor.’ And Bell finished dressing hurriedly, and went to her mother’s tent, while Polly and Margery smoothed the bed with a furtive kick of straw over the offending gopher-holes, and hung a dark shawl so as to shield Laura’s eyes.
Aunt Truth entered speedily, with a family medical guide under one arm, and a box of remedies under the other.
‘The doctor has told me just what to do, and he will see you after breakfast himself. It doesn’t look so very bad a case, dear; don’t run about in the sun for a day or two, and we’ll bring you out all right. The doctor has had us all under treatment at some time or other, because of that troublesome little plant.’
‘I don’t want to get up to breakfast,’ moaned Laura.
‘Just as you like. But it is Polly’s birthday, you know (many happy returns, my sweet Pollykins), and there are great preparations going on.’
‘I can’t help it, Mrs. Winship. The boys would make fun of my looks; and I shouldn’t blame them.’
‘Appear as the Veiled Lady,’ suggested Margery, as Mrs. Winship went out.
‘I won’t come, and that’s the end of it,’ said Laura. ‘Perhaps if I bathe my face all the morning I can come to dinner.’
After breakfast was cleared away, Hop Yet and Mrs. Howard’s little China boy Gin were given a half-holiday, and allowed to go to a—neighbouring ranch to see a ‘flend’ of Hop Yet’s; for it was a part of the birthday scheme that Bell and Geoffrey should cook the festival dinner.
Jack was so delighted at the failure of Polly’s scheme to sew him in his tent, that he simply radiated amiability, and spent the whole morning helping Elsie and Margery with a set of elaborate dinner-cards, executed on half-sheets of note-paper.
The dinner itself was a grand success. Half of the cards bore a caricature of Polly in the shape of a parrot, with the inscription ‘Polly want a cracker?’ The rest were adorned with pretty sketches of her in her camping-dress, a kettle in one hand, and underneath,
‘Polly, put the kettle on,
We’ll all have tea.’
This was the bill of fare arranged by Bell and Geoffrey, and written on the reverse side of the dinner-cards
DINNER À LA MOTHER GOOSE.
Camp Chaparral.
August 15, 18—.
* * *
‘Come with a whoop, come with a call;
Come with a good will, or not at all.’
‘VICTUALS AND DRINK.’
Bean Soup.
‘She gave them some broth, she gave them some bread.’
Salt Codfish.
‘You shall have a fishy
In a little dishy.’
Roast Mutton à la Venison.
‘Dear sensibility, O la!
I heard a little lamb cry ba-a!’
Potatoes in Jackets.
‘The butcher, the baker, the candlestick-maker,
All jumped out of a roasted potato.’
Stewed Beans.
‘You, nor I, nor nobody knows,
Where oats, peas, beans, and barley grows.’
Chicken and Beef Sandwiches.
‘Hickety, pickety, my pretty hen
Laid good eggs for gentlemen.’
‘Taffy was a Welshman, Taffy was a thief,
Taffy came to my house and stole a piece of beef.’
Lemon Pie.
