The Outdoor Girls at Bluff Point | Page 5

Nelson had carelessly thrown on the table.
"What is it?" they cried, as she snatched it up and read the glaring headlines.
"The Hostess House!" gasped Mollie. "Gone! Burnt up! Read this!"
Dazedly the girls obeyed, the big type seeming to strike them in the face as they read:
"Great Fire at Camp Liberty! Hostess House and Several Barracks Buildings Burned to the Ground!"
CHAPTER III
MAKING PLANS
"I can't seem to get used to it," sighed Mollie several days later, as she ran up the steps of her porch and opened the screen door for the girls. "To think that no matter how much we want to go back to the Hostess House--"
"There is no Hostess House to go back to," finished Grace, sinking down in a luxurious porch swing and plumping the cushion behind her back. Grace always had a gift for finding the soft places. "It is rather discouraging."
"Just as we were going to work hard and forget how unhappy we were, too," added Amy plaintively.
"Goodness, but we're not going to be unhappy," put in Betty, rocking vigorously. "I thought we decided that three days ago."
"I know. But when we think--"
"But we musn't think," Betty interrupted quickly, adding with a little twinkle: "About being unhappy, that is. All we have to do is just hold on to the belief that the boys are coming back a year from now, maybe less--coming back without a hair less than they had when they went away."
"We didn't count 'em," said Mollie drolly. "The hairs, that is, so how can we tell?"
"Isn't she funny?" drawled Grace, catching the pillow Mollie threw at her and depositing it calmly behind her back. "Thanks, old dear," she said. "I just needed another one."
"I thought we came to talk over the plans for our vacation," Amy put in mildly, adding with a little laugh: "We have to take one now whether we want it or not."
"But we haven't the slightest idea what we're going to do," protested Grace. "I guess we'd just better stay at home and do nothing."
"My, aren't you encouraging?" cried Mollie, looking up indignantly from the pair of socks she was knitting. "You might at least suggest something."
"Ooh, there you are!"
They turned suddenly to see a mischievous little face peeping at them from around the corner of the porch.
"Dodo, you little wretch, come here," cried Mollie, trying to look severe and failing utterly.
"Now what mischief have you been up to?"
"No," protested Dodo, shaking her curly head vigorously, as she reluctantly abandoned her vantage point and came slowly toward Mollie. "No mischief 'tall. Me an' Paul jus' playin'."
This was Dora, nicknamed Dodo, and Paul, Mollie Billette's small brother and sister, who were nearly always getting into some sort of mischief from the time they stepped their little feet out of bed in the morning till the time they slipped the same little feet, tired out with getting into trouble, into bed at night.
"You darling!" cried Betty, catching the little figure to her and administering a bear's hug. "You're terribly bad, but we can't help loving you."
"Uh-uh," denied Dodo, wriggling free of Betty's embrace and looking at her earnestly. "Me's never bad--only Paul."
"Ooh, Dodo Billette!" cried Paul, bursting in upon them from no one could quite tell where. "You's a big story teller!"
"You's the big 'tory teller," cried Dodo, coming sturdily to the rescue of her reputation. "You just go 'way. Mol--lie, oh, Mollie, make him go 'way!"
"Oh, dear!" cried Mollie, half amused and half vexed as she put aside her knitting and took Dodo on her lap. "I thought you and Paul promised to play with the bunnies all the afternoon and not bother sister. Can't you see she has company?"
"Yes," smiled the little girl, reaching up to pat Mollie's cheek ingratiatingly. "Me an' Paul got tired playin' wiv bunnies an' came to see you. We want," she added succinctly, "tandies!"
"Well, you won't get any, not this time," said Mollie definitely, trying not to smile, while the other girls were not even trying. It was always hard not to laugh at the twins, naughty as they often were.
"Why?" demanded Dodo severely.
"Never mind why," returned Mollie, putting the little girl down and taking up her knitting again. "Now run off, both of you, we want to talk."
"But we want tandies," repeated Dodo, looking surprised that Mollie had not understood the first time. "Dive Paul an' me tandies--lots of tandies--an' we'll go 'long. Shan't we, Paul? Ooh--" the question ended in an anguished wail as Dora's eyes rested on her faithless twin.
The latter had extracted Grace's half-filled candy box from under a cushion where she had hastily hidden it at the first threat of invasion by the insatiable twins and was at the moment busily engaged in devouring its contents. Grace had been too busy watching Dodo to notice him.
"Ooh, you bad