Betty Gordon at Mountain Camp | Page 4

beautiful diamond set in the center of its
face, and when she turned it over on the back was engraved the
intertwined letters "E.G."
"For the land's sake!" ejaculated Mrs. Staples, coming nearer and
grabbing the locket out of Ida's hand. "Where did you get this?"
"Why, Mrs. Staples, you saw me pick it up."
"But how did it come there?"
"Oh, I know!" Ida Bellethorne cried, with sudden animation. "That girl
stood right there. She opened her bag to get out her purse and she must
have flirted it out to the floor."
"Humph!" said the storekeeper doubtfully.
"Give it to me, Mrs. Staples, and I'll run after her," cried the English
girl anxiously.
"Humph!" This was Mrs. Staples' stock ejaculation and expressed a
variety of emotions. Just now it expressed doubt. "And then you'd come
back and tell me how thankful she was to get it, while maybe it doesn't
belong to her at all. No," said Mrs. Staples, "let her come looking for it
if she lost it."
"Oh!" murmured Ida Bellethorne doubtfully.
"Perhaps she will never guess she dropped it here."
"That's no skin off your nose," declared the vulgar shopwoman.
"You've no rights in this thing, anyway. What's found on the floor of
my shop is just as much mine as what's on the counter or in the trays

behind the counter. I know my rights. Until whoever lost this thing
comes in and proves property, it's mine."
"Oh, Mrs. Staples!" cried her employee. "Is that the law in this country?
It doesn't seem honest."
"Humph! It's honest enough for me. And who are you, I'd like to know,
a greenhorn fresh from the old country, trying to tell me what's honest
and what ain't? If that girl comes back----"
"Yes, Mrs. Staples?"
"You sell her that other blouse if you want to, or anything else out of
the shop. But you keep your mouth shut about this locket unless she
asks for it. Understand? I won't have no tattle-tales about me; and if
you don't learn when to keep your mouth open and when to keep it shut,
I'll have no use at all for you in my shop. Remember that now!"
CHAPTER II
THE FRUITS OF TANTALUS
Betty Gordon had glanced hastily at her wrist watch as she went out of
the little store. It was very near the minute appointed for her to meet
Carter at the square. And she had forgotten to ask that girl, Ida
Bellethorne (such an Englishy name!), how to find her rendezvous with
the Littells' chauffeur.
She hesitated, tempted to run back. Had she done so she would have
been in time to see Ida pick up the little locket that Uncle Dick had
given Betty that very Christmas and which she carried in her bag
because it seemed the safest place to treasure it while she was visiting.
Her trunk was at Shadyside.
So it is that the very strangest threads of romance are woven in this
world. And Betty Gordon had found before this that her life, at least,
was patterned in a very wonderful way. Since she had been left an
orphan and had found her only living relative, Mr. Richard Gordon, her

father's brother, such a really delightful guardian the girl had been to so
many places and her adventures had been so exciting that her head was
sometimes quite in a whirl when she tried to think of all the
happenings.
Uncle Dick's contracts with certain oil promotion companies made it
impossible as yet for him to have what Betty thought of as "a real,
sure-enough home." He traveled here, there and everywhere. Betty
loved to travel too; but Uncle Dick was forced to go to such rough and
wild places that at first he could not see how Betty, a twelve year old,
gently bred girl, could go with him.
Therefore he had to find a home for his little ward for a few months,
and remembering that an old school friend of his was married to the
owner of a big and beautiful farm, he arranged for Betty to stay with
the Peabodys at Bramble Farm. Her adventures as a "paying guest" in
the Peabody household are fully related in the first book of the series,
entitled "Betty Gordon at Bramble Farm," and a very exciting
experience it was.
In spite, however, of the disagreeable and miserly Joseph Peabody,
Betty would not have missed her adventures at the farm for anything.
In the first place, she met Bob Henderson there, and a better boy-chum
a girl never had than Bob. Although Bob had been born and brought up
in a poorhouse, and at first knew very little about himself and his
relatives, even a girl like Betty could see that this "poorhouse