Dorothy Dales Camping Days | Page 5

that the hay would make a spontaneous blaze
in that lamentable instance.
Dorothy saw more than a joke in the remark. Tavia was so ridiculously
daring! It would be very wise to get rid of the hay before entering the
sacred precincts of Glenwood.
The sight was most absurd. Five pretty girls, each dressed in the
Glenwood blue and white, and each with a bundle of fragrant hay on
her shoulder.
"There's a lamb!" declared Cologne. "I could do worse than give Mary's
pet a treat," and she ran to the rail fence, jumped up on one of the queer
crossed posts, and called all sorts of names to the surprised sheep, that
scarcely stopped grazing to notice the girls outside of the barrier.
This spectacle induced the other students to climb up on the crooked
fence, and presently the old rails were ornamented with the five girls in
blue, with the hay bundles in hand!
It was getting dusk, and the sunset did not detract from the unusual
scene. Great shafts of gold and scarlet fell down on that old fence, and
a prettier sight could scarcely have been worked up, much less
imagined.
"Here, sheepy, sheepy!" called Tavia.
"Here, lamby, lamby, lamby!" pleaded Dorothy.
"Here, woolly, woolly, woolly!" invited Nita.
"Here, kinky, kinky, kinky!" induced Edna.

"Here, Flossy, Flossy, Flossy!" persuaded Cologne.
But never a lamb, sheep or other species of animal named made a move
toward the fence.
"I'll get a few!" declared Tavia, jumping down over the fence, into the
meadow, and racing wildly among the sheep.
"The ram! The ram!" shouted Edna. "Tavia! He is coming directly for
you!"
This was a signal for Tavia to turn back to the fence. The ram did
follow her. She pulled down a rail, and bolted through the opening just
as the savage animal and the great herd of sheep followed.
"Run, sheep, run!" yelled Edna, as the much-terrified girls scattered
hither and thither, along the road, fully conscious that they were
responsible for the safety of the frantic flock that had broken loose
from their pasture.
"Now for the farmer and his whip!" gasped Dorothy. "I thought we had
had enough of that for one afternoon!"
"Too much is enough," answered Edna dryly, "but Tavia likes it. May
she have a real account of the little lamb story for the English class
to-morrow."
"Look! They are all following her!" moaned Nita.
"And they seem to think she is taking them home to supper!" added
Cologne.
"What shall we do?" wailed Nita. "We will surely all be arrested!"
"Wish the police van would hurry up, then," sighed Edna, "I am getting
tuckered out," and she glanced back again, to behold Tavia in the very
midst of the flock of the now somewhat quieted sheep.
"A nice cool cell wouldn't be so bad," declared Cologne, who, being

inclined to flesh, was apt to give out before her companions would give
in.
"How are the 'Bo-Peepers'?" yelled Tavia, with a flourish of a stick
meant to represent a shepherdess crook. "Or do you prefer the old
Roman? There will be all kinds of conflagrations when Nero comes!"
"Isn't she dreadful!" retorted Nita, whose face was really a sickly white.
"She gets us all into trouble, and then gloats over it."
"You wanted something real to write about to-day," Edna reminded her.
"This would make a regular thriller!"
"But, as a matter of fact," began Dorothy seriously, as she stopped, and
her companions halted with her, "what had we best do? We cannot
walk into Glenwood Hall with a herd of sheep at our heels," for the
animals were now following the girls along the road.
"Let's shoo them," suggested Cologne. "Maybe they'll shoo nicely."
"We'll get shooed when we try to get in to-night," murmured Edna.
"And just when we were finishing up the year in rather good style. I
hadn't a single thing against my name----"
"There's that man who saved the team," gasped Dorothy. "Mercy!
Wherever does he come from? A man is worse than two herds of
sheep--in our scrape with Mrs. Pangborn!"
Just as mysteriously as he had appeared before, the man with the
Chesterfieldian walk, and the big slouch hat, turned into the road.
Where he had come from, nobody could imagine.
"He has followed us!" breathed Nita. "Oh, dear me!" and she pressed
her handkerchief to her eyes.
"If you cry we will tell him you are too ill to walk, and then, maybe
he'll offer to carry you," blurted out Edna. "If one insists on being a
baby, she must be babied."

This charge rather frightened Nita back to courage, or at least she
pretended to it, for she promptly quickened her pace, and even hid
away her handkerchief.
Tavia, too, saw the strange man as