"Do take Meg with you by force, Miss Ashton," he urged. (It was always
quite thrilling to Betty at fifteen to be called "Miss Ashton," and no
other boy of her acquaintance seemed to realize that one could grow out
of being addressed as "Betty".) "She spoils the small boy and all the
rest of us far too much. 'Bumps' has just taken another tumble." Jack
Everett then backed out of the room in soldierly fashion and at the
instant of his disappearance Betty tucked her arms about the small
Horace, critically surveying his injured eye.

"Do hurry and get dressed, Meg, that's a dear. You know we simply can't
get on without you this afternoon. I will button you up in a jiffy and
we can take this bumptious little person along with us. He will
probably escape and fall down somewhere while we are having our meeting,
but we can both keep our eyes on him."

"He would be too much trouble," Meg demurred, but already she was
surveying her only clean shirt waists, a blue and a white one, to see
which was in the better state of repair. The blue was faded but whole,
so she slipped into it, letting Betty button it up the back, and then
with her brother's words still rankling in her mind carefully adjusted
her skirt at, the belt. "You are awfully good to let me come this
afternoon, Betty, because I told you it would be just impossible for me
to spend the summer with you girls as it would be for me to take a trip
to the moon. John is going camping and father is to have a summer
lecture course in Boston and--"

"Oh yes, and you are to stay at home and take care of this house and
baby! I don't think it is fair, or that your father or brother in the
least realize what you do for them. But see here, dear, if what I
thinks is true, as my old nurse used to say, and you come to be a Camp