Betty Gordon at Mountain Camp | Page 5

rat" as he
was slurringly called by Joseph Peabody, possessed natural refinement
and a very bright mind.
Betty and Bob became loyal friends, and when Betty, in the second
volume, called "Betty Gordon in Washington," had fairly to run away
from Bramble Farm to meet her Uncle Dick in the national capital,
badly treated Bob ran away likewise, on the track of somebody who
knew about his mother's relatives. Betty's adventures in Washington
began with a most astonishing confusion of identities through which
she met the Littells--a charming family consisting of a Mr. Littell, who
was likewise an "Uncle Dick"; a motherly Mrs. Littell, who never
found young people--either boys or girls--troublesome; three delightful

sisters named Louise, Roberta, and Esther Littell; and a Cousin
Elizabeth Littell, who good-naturedly becomes "Libbie" instead of
"Betty" so as not to conflict in anybody's mind with "Betty" Gordon.
The fun they all had in Washington while Betty waited for the
appearance of her real Uncle Dick, especially after Bob Henderson
turned up and was likewise adopted for the time being by the Littell
family, is detailed to the full in that second story. And at last both Betty
and Bob got news from Oklahoma, where Mr. Richard Gordon was
engaged, which set them traveling westward in a great hurry--Betty to
meet Uncle Dick at Flame City and her boy chum hard on the trace of
two elusive aunts of his, his mother's sisters, who appeared to be the
only relatives he had in the world.
Betty and Bob discovered the aunts just in time to save them from
selling their valuable but unsuspected oil holdings to sharpers, and in
"Betty Gordon in the Land of Oil" one of the most satisfactory results
that Betty saw accomplished was the selling of the old farm for Bob
and his aunts for ninety thousand dollars.
Uncle Dick decided that Betty must go to a good school in the fall, and
they chose Shadyside because the Littells and their friends were going
there. Bob, now on a satisfactory financial plane, arranged to attend the
Salsette Military Academy which was right across the lake from the
girls' boarding school, Uncle Dick, who was now Bob's guardian,
having advised this.
Hastening back from Oklahoma, while Uncle Dick was called to
Canada to examine a promising oil field there, Betty and Bob met the
girls and boys they previously got acquainted with in Washington and
some other friends, and Betty at least began her boarding school
experience with considerable confidence as well as delight.
It was not all plain sailing as subsequent events prove; yet in "Betty
Gordon at Boarding School," the fourth volume of the series, Betty had
many; pleasant adventures as well as school trials. She was particularly
interested in the fortunes of Norma and Alice Guerin, who had been
Betty's friends when she was living at Bramble Farm; and it was

through Betty's good offices that great happiness came to the Guerin
girls and their parents.
The hospitable Littells had invited their daughters' school friends (and,
to quote Bob, there was a raft of them!) to come to Fairfields for the
Christmas holidays, and at the close of the first term they bade
good-bye to Shadyside and Salsette and took the train for Washington.
Fairfields, which was over the river in Virginia, was one of the most
delightful homes Betty Gordon had ever seen. It was closer to
Georgetown than to the nation's capital, and that is why Betty on this
brisk morning was shopping in the old-fashioned town and had come
across the orange silk over-blouse in the window of the neighborhood
shop.
It was really too bad that Betty did not run back to the shop to ask for
directions to the soldiers' monument square. She would have been just
in season to interrupt the scene between Ida Bellethorne and Mrs.
Staples and before the latter had threatened Ida with dismissal if she
told Betty about the tiny locket. When she came to find it out, this loss
of Uncle Dick's present, was going to trouble Betty Gordon very much.
"Where in the world can that soldiers' monument be?" murmured Betty
to herself as, after hurrying on for a distance and having turned two
corners, she found herself in a neighborhood that looked stranger than
ever to her.
Not a soul was in sight at that moment, but presently she saw a small
negro boy shuffling along, drawing a piece of chalk on the various
houses and stoops as he passed.
"Boy, come here!" called Betty to the little fellow.
At once the colored boy stopped the use of his piece of chalk and stared
at her with wide-open eyes.
"I ain't done nuffin, lady, 'deed I ain't," he mumbled, and then began to
back away.

"I only want