“Well, I gueth I’m thome folkth.”

CHAPTER XVII

THE SOUP THAT FAILED

Almost the sole topic of discussion at Camp Wau-Wau on the following day was the train of exciting events of the previous evening.  There were, too, murmurs of disapproval at the trick that Harriet Burrell and Jane McCarthy had played on the girls.  Some of the Camp Girls were ashamed that they had shown such cowardice, others were angry at the Meadow-Brook Girls for making them appear at a disadvantage.  Among the latter were Patricia and Cora.  These two were talking it over when Harriet in passing, bade them a pleasant good morning.

“Now look at her superior smile, will you?” jeered Patricia.  “I just would like to take her down a notch or two, and I will before I leave this camp.”

“How?” asked Cora reflectively.

“I don’t know.  I’ll catch her somehow and make a laughing stock of her before the rest of the girls.”

“Patricia, have you forgotten the bath towel—­have you forgotten what she knows about us?”

“No, I haven’t,” answered Patricia Scott, with a toss of her head.

“And she hasn’t said a word to any one about it.”

“You don’t know that.  Have you noticed that that Miss Elting looks at us very queerly when she passes us?  She is very cold and distant, too, just as though she knew something about us.  You mark my words, that Meadow-Brook Girl has told her all about finding the towel, but if it gets to the Chief Guardian I know how I can turn the tables on that impudent Harriet Burrell.”

“How?”

“In the easiest way you can imagine.  I’ll say that Harriet never has liked me and that she had taken my towel and hidden it purposely, just to produce it at the right time and accuse me of having been implicated in the hazing.”

“But it wasn’t your towel,” protested Cora.  “It was mine.”

“That’s all right.  That will make it all the better.  She will say it was your towel and I will say it was mine.  Don’t you see how that will mix the affair up?  You must stand by me if it comes to that.”

“Of course,” answered Cora Kidder, but in rather a weak voice.  She was not a bad girl at heart, but she was easily influenced; it was not difficult to persuade her to look at any matter with other eyes than her own.  It was the bad influence of Patricia Scott that already had led Cora so far into mischief, and that gave promise of leading her still farther.  Patricia, on the other hand, possessed a jealous and revengeful disposition.  It had caused her trouble in her own home and lost her many friends in her home town.  She had been sent to the camp in the hope that the wholesome life in the woods might give her a new point of view, and that the association with the Camp Girls might make a better girl of her.  Thus far the desired result had not been attained, though she had managed to hide her shortcomings from Mrs. Livingston and the guardians.  At times Mrs. Livingston, close observer that she was, had wondered as to the girl’s real character, but Patricia’s sweet smile, easily assumed to fit the occasion, had on each occasion disarmed the Chief Guardian.