About noon, however, Margery Brown got a blister on her right heel, and Hazel turned one of her ankles.  This put an end to the mountain climbing for the time being, but not to the hanging-on.  The girls perched themselves behind rocks for support while the guardian was dressing the sprain and the blister.  Janus went on to look over the trail and pick out the easy places.  While they were waiting for Miss Elting to attend to Margery and Hazel, the guide returned with an armful of dry sticks.

“We aren’t going to starve even if we can’t move on,” he cried cheerily.  “I promised you that you shouldn’t have a warm meal until we reached the summit this evening.  I’m going to give you a surprise, though.  Now, what will you have?”

“I think I’ll have a thirloin thteak,” answered Tommy.

“A cup of coffee will help me, I am sure,” declared Harriet.

“I would eat the frying-pan handle if I couldn’t get anything better,” added Jane.  “Mountain climbing is something like work, eh?”

Janus bolstered up his dry wood in a crotch formed by a jutting rock, and built a fire where one would scarcely have believed it were possible to do so.  He got water from a little spring just above them, and by the time Miss Elting had disposed of her patients for the moment the water for coffee was boiling.  But there was no setting of a table.  To have put a dish down on that slope would have meant to lose it, and they had too few dishes to be able to afford to lose even one.

The coffee was drunk without milk, though lumps of sugar were produced from each girl’s blouse pocket and dropped into her cup with much laughter.  They made the best of their circumstances; but when, about the middle of the afternoon, Miss Elting informed the guide that she did not think Hazel’s ankle would permit of her going any further that day, there was a flurry in the mountainside camp.

The guide declared that they must go on until a suitable camping place were reached, but how he did not say until he had consulted his whiskers and studied the valleys below.  He then gravely announced that he would carry Hazel on his back.  She promptly declared that she would not permit it, and Miss Elting agreed with her.  Then Janus rose to the occasion by telling them that he would make a litter if one of the young ladies thought she could bear up one end of it.  Both Harriet and Jane settled the matter by declaring they could carry the litter with Hazel in it.

Janus made the litter by first laying two ropes on the ground about eighteen inches apart.  On these at right angles he tied sticks until the affair resembled a carrier belt on a piece of machinery.  A loop with a stick rove into it was arranged at each end and a blanket was thrown over the litter, which was then pronounced ready.  None of them ever had seen anything like it.  The girls feared the litter would sag so that no one could ride on it without being dragged along the ground.  Janus said the advantage in a rope litter was that they could go around a bend with it and not break the side pieces, and, furthermore, that it was soft and had plenty of give.  Jane winked at Harriet, Hazel looked troubled, while Tommy’s face assumed a wise expression.