Children's Book Classics - Kate Douglas Wiggin Edition: 11 Novels & 120+ Short Stories for Children. Kate Douglas Wiggin

      ‘As you are Strong, be merciful,’ quoted Margery Noble, coaxingly; ‘take my advice and call it Harmony Camp.’

      At this juncture, a lovely woman, whose sweet face and smile made you love her at once, came up the hill from the brookside. ‘What, what! still quarrelling, children?’ she asked, laughingly. ‘Let me be peacemaker. I’ve just asked the Doctor for a name, and he suggests Camp Chaparral. What do you say?’

      Bell released one coat-tail. ‘That isn’t wholly bad,’ she said, critically, while the other girls clapped their hands with approval; for anything that Aunt Truth suggested was sure to be quite right.

      ‘Wait a minute, good people,’ cried Jack Howard, flinging his fishing-tackle under a tree and sauntering toward the scene of action. ‘Suppose we have a referee, a wise and noble judge. Call Hop Yet, and let him decide this all-important subject.’

      His name being sung and shouted in various keys by the assembled company, Hop Yet appeared at the door of the brush kitchen, a broad grin on his countenance, a plucked fowl in his hand.

      Geoffrey took the floor. ‘Now, Hop Yet, you know I got name, you got name, everybody got name. We want name this camp: you sabe? Miss Bell, she say Camp Frolic. Frolic all same heap good time’ (here he executed a sort of war-dance which was intended to express wild joy). ‘Miss Pauline, she say Camp Ha-Ha, big laugh: sabe? Ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha!’ (chorus joined in by all to fully illustrate the subject). ‘Miss Madge, she say Camp Harmony. Harmony all same heap quiet time, plenty eat, plenty drink, plenty sleep, no fight, no too muchee talk. Mrs. Winship, she say Camp Chaparral: you sabe? Chaparral, Hop Yet. Now what you say?’

      Hop Yet seemed to regard the question with mingled embarrassment and amusement, but being a sharp and talkative Chinaman gave his answer promptly: ‘Me say Camp Chap-lal heap good name; plenty chap-lal all lound; me hang um dish-cloth, tow’l, little boy’s stockin’, on chap-lal; all same clo’se-line velly good. Miss Bell she folic, Miss Polly she ha! ha! allee same Camp Chap-lal.’

      And so Camp Chaparral it was; the redwood board flaunted the assertion before the eyes of the public (which was a rather limited one, to be sure) in less than half an hour, and the artist, after painting the words in rustic letters a foot long, cut branches of the stiff, ungracious bushes and nailed them to the tree in confirmation and illustration of the fact. He then carefully deposited the paint-pot in a secret place, where it might be out of sight and touch of a certain searching eye and mischievous hand well known and feared of him; but before the setting sun had dropped below the line of purple mountain tops, a small boy, who will be known in these annals as Dicky Winship, might have been seen sitting on the empty paint-pot, while from a dingy pool upon the ground he was attempting to paint a copy of the aforesaid inscription upon the side of a too patient goat, who saw no harm in the operation. He was alone, and very, very happy.

      And now I must tell you the way in which all this began. You may not realise it, dear young folks, but this method of telling a story is very much the fashion with grown-up people, and of course I am not to blame, since I didn’t begin it.

      The plan is this: You must first write a chapter showing all your people, men, women, children, dogs, and cats, in a certain place, doing certain things. Then you must go back a year or two and explain how they all happen to be there. Perhaps you may have to drag your readers twenty-five years into the regions of the past, and show them the first tooth of your oldest character; but that doesn’t matter a bit,—the further the better. Then, when everybody has forgotten what came to pass in the first chapter, you are ready to take it up again, as if there had never been any parenthesis. However, I shall not introduce you to the cradles, cribs, or trundle-beds of my merry young campers, but merely ask you to retrace your steps one week, and look upon them in their homes.

      On one of the pleasantest streets of a certain little California town stood, and still stands for aught I know, a pretty brown cottage, with its verandahs covered with passion-vine and a brilliant rose-garden in front. It is picturesque enough to attract the attention of any passer-by, and if you had chosen to peep through the crevices in the thick vines and look in at the open window, you might have thought it lovelier within than without.

      It was a bright day, and the gracious June sunshine flooded the room with yellow light. Three young girls, perhaps fourteen or fifteen years old, were seated in different parts of the large room, plying industrious crochet needles and tatting shuttles. Three pairs of bright eyes were dancing with fun and gladness; and another pair, the softest and clearest of all, looked out from a broad white bed in the corner,—tired eyes, and oh, so patient, for the health-giving breezes wafted in from the blue ocean and carried over mountain tops and vine-covered slopes had so far failed to bring back Elsie Howard’s strength and vigour.

      The graceful, brown-haired girl with the bright, laughter-loving face, was Bell Winship. She of the dancing blue eyes, pink cheeks, and reckless little sun-bonnet was Pauline, otherwise Polly Oliver. Did you ever know a Polly without some one of these things? Well, my Polly had them all, and, besides, a saucy freckled nose, a crown of fluffy, reddish-yellow hair, and a shower of coaxing little pitfalls called dimples round her pretty mouth. She made you think of a sunbeam, a morning songbird, a dancing butterfly, or an impetuous little crocus just out after the first spring shower. Dislike her? You couldn’t. Approve of her? You wouldn’t always. Love her? Of course; you couldn’t help yourself,—I defy you.

      To be sure, if you prefer a quiet life, and do not want to be led into exploits of all kinds, invariably beginning with risk, attended with danger, and culminating in despair, you had better not engage in an intimate friendship with Miss Pauline Oliver, but fix your affections on the quiet, thoughtful, but not less lovable girl who sits by the bedside stroking Elsie Howard’s thin white hand. Nevertheless, I am obliged to state that Margery Noble herself, earnest, demure, and given to reflection, was Polly’s willing slave and victim. However, I’ve forgotten to tell you that Polly was as open and frank as the daylight, at once torrid and constant in her affections, brave, self-forgetting as well as self-willed; and that though she did have a tongue just the least bit saucy, she used it valiantly in the defence of others. ‘She’ll come out all right,’ said a dear old-fashioned grandfather of hers whom she had left way back in a Vermont farmhouse. ‘She’s got to be purged o’ considerable dross, but she’ll come out pure gold, I tell you.’

      Pretty, wise, tender Margery Noble, with her sleek brown braids, her innocent, questioning eyes, her soft voice, willing hands, and shy, quiet manners! ‘She will either end as the matron of an orphan asylum or as head-nurse in a hospital.’ So Bell Winship often used to say; but then she was chiefly celebrated for talking nonsense, and nobody ever paid much attention to her. But if you should crave a breath of fresh air, or want to believe that the spring has come, just call Bell Winship in, as she walks with her breezy step down the street. Her very hair seems instinct with life, with its flying tendrils of bronze brightness and the riotous little curls on her brow and temples. Then, too, she has a particularly jaunty way of putting on her jacket, or wearing a flower or a ribbon; and as for her ringing peal of laughter, it is like a chime of silver bells.

      Elsie Howard, the invalid friend of the girls, was as dear to them as they were to each other. She kept the secrets of the ‘firm’; mourned over their griefs and smiled over their joys; was proud of their talents and tenderly blind to their faults. The little wicker rocking-chair by the bedside was often made a sort of confessional, at which she presided, the tenderest and most sympathetic little priestess in the universe; and every afternoon the piazza, with its lattice of green vines, served as a mimic throne-room, where she was wont to hold high court, surrounded by her devoted subjects. Here Geoffrey Strong used often to read to the assembled company David Copperfield, Alice in Wonderland, or snatches from the magazines, while Jack Howard lazily stretched himself under the orange-trees and braided lariats, a favourite occupation with California boys. About four o’clock Philip Noble would ride up from his father’s fruit ranch, some three miles out on the San Marcos road, and, hitching his little sorrel mare Chispa