Читать книгу Outdoor Girls at New Moon Ranch - Stratemeyer Edward - Страница 7

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For a moment there was a dead silence while the girls stared at Meg Bronson. Then Mollie drew a deep breath.

“Of course you are only joking,” she said. “For a moment I thought you were in earnest.”

Meg continued to nibble at her cake, hiding her mischievous, twinkling eyes from them.

“Well,” she said innocently, “why shouldn’t I have been in earnest? Does it sound so—impossible?”

Plaintively the eyes of the Outdoor Girls wandered to Lota.

“What is she talking about?” demanded Irene, sudden excitement in her voice. “You ought to know. You’re her twin!”

Lota’s eyes danced but her mouth was demure.

“Maybe she means what she says. Why don’t you ask her?”

Here Meg took pity on them.

“Why,” she said, “I was sort of trying to ask you how you’d like to go out to New Moon Ranch.”

“You ask us how we’d like——”

Stella ran over to Meg and shook her.

“Do you mean that as a proposition?” she demanded.

Meg chuckled.

“You go and sit down and I’ll tell you what I mean,” she promised.

Stella reluctantly obeyed. The eyes of all the Outdoor Girls were fixed upon Meg Bronson. No doubt but what she held their attention now!

“You see,” began the Western girl, playing lazily with her ice, “as we were saying, Uncle Dan bought this ranch mostly for the timberland that’s on it. But there’s a great big, rambling ranch house on the place, with stacks and stacks of rooms——”

“Just going to waste,” Lota interjected.

“Exactly,” Meg agreed. “So Lota and I, we sort of put our heads together and wondered if we couldn’t figure out a way of using those rooms.”

“You did!” breathed Carolyn.

Meg gave her an odd glance.

“We did figure out a way, if that’s what you mean,” she said. “We thought that if the Outdoor Girls wanted an outing, why, New Moon Ranch was about the best place in the world to go for it.”

“That was a real inspiration,” cried Mollie happily. “Is it all settled, then?”

“Well,” Meg drawled, a humorous wrinkle between the eyes, “it’s all settled except for one little thing——”

“What is that?” the girls, in chorus, demanded to know impatiently.

“Well,” again the humorous drawl was evident, “we’re willing—but how about Uncle Dan?”

The girls stared at her incredulously.

“You mean to say you haven’t even asked him yet?” cried Stella Sibley.

Irene had been about to execute a dance of jubilation. Now she paused in the midst of a step and looked at Meg disconsolately.

“I just knew there was a catch in it, somewhere!” she said.

“A catch in what?” boomed a hearty voice from the doorway.

The young folks whirled about to see a huge man standing in the doorway. Daniel Tower was six feet two in his stockings. He was broad-shouldered and deep-chested. As he stood there he seemed to fill the doorway completely.

However, as he moved to one side, the surprised girls espied Mr. Sibley smiling at them in the background.

Meg and Lota ran to their guardian, flung their arms about him and dragged him into the room.

“Uncle Dan!” cried the latter. “What brought you here?”

“You might better ask, who brought me here,” said the lumberman in his deep, booming voice. He made a smiling gesture toward Mr. Sibley. “I happened to meet this gentleman and he brought me on here to have a peep-in at you youngsters and to shake hands with the Outdoor Girls.”

Mr. Sibley followed the lumberman into the room and genially introduced him to the young people. The boys afterward declared that they were entirely cut out by the older men. The girls surrounded the latter at once, plying them with attentions—which included ices and more of the little round cakes—and in other ways spoiling them completely.

Mr. Sibley accepted the attentions with his usual genial good nature. But old Daniel Tower fairly beamed.

“I’ve heard a lot about the Outdoor Girls of Deepdale. In fact,” with a twinkling glance at the twins, “I’ve heard very little of anything else since we came here. But I must say,” he added with pleasant elderly gallantry, “that now I’ve seen ’em I don’t believe my girls talked half enough about them.”

Irene cried impishly:

“Bring another ice, some one. That was worth it!”

Mr. Tower laughed and tweaked her ear.

“You’ve Irish in you, Miss Irene,” he said. “I can tell it by the look of your eye——”

“And by the way my nose turns up!” finished Irene sorrowfully. “I know! That always gives me away.”

After considerable more of this sort of banter, in which all the young folks joined, Daniel Tower repeated the question he had asked upon entering the room.

“When I came in I heard some one say there was a catch in something, somewhere,” he boomed. “I reckoned,” with a chuckle, “that from the way it was said, the young person wasn’t thinking of the catch on the front door——”

“No, Uncle Dan,” said Lota, with a mocking glance at Irene. “When she spoke of the catch, she meant you.”

Daniel Tower looked from one to the other of them, his keen grey eyes searching their laughing faces. Meg broke in, putting an arm about her guardian’s broad shoulders.

“I won’t have you teasing Uncle Dan,” she cried. “Listen, guardian, while we tell you what it’s all about.”

Uncle Dan listened while the twinkle deepened in his eyes.

“So you’ve gone and made all your plans and then ask me about it later!” he said, pretending sternness. “Well, I like that!”

Lota coaxed.

“But we felt sure you’d let us, Uncle Dan,” she said. “All those rooms are going to waste, anyway.”

Daniel Tower capitulated. He pinched Lota’s cheek and his eyes grew soft.

“We could stow all the Outdoor Girls—and the boys too, for that matter—in one wing of the old ranch house and never miss the room,” he said. “It would brighten up the old place to have young people about. In fact,” he admitted, the twinkle spreading to his whole face, “I was going to make the suggestion myself!”

If Daniel Tower was popular before with the Outdoor Girls, how much more so was he after this declaration! He was plied with ice cream and cake until it was a wonder he lived through it.

However, he and Mr. Sibley left after a while, declaring that they still had business to attend to, and the boys and girls were left to their excited happy plans for the future.

“I think your uncle is a darling!” cried Mollie Billette.

“Yes, so we gathered!” said Clem.

“He is.” Lota did not deign to notice Clem’s interruption. “So is New Moon Ranch. Just wait till you see it.”

“That’s just it!” cried Carolyn Cooper, doing a jubilant pirouette about the room. “How long shall we have to wait?”

“Probably that’s up to us,” said Stella. “If we can get the folks to consent——”

“Your dad already said you could go,” Irene pointed out enviously.

“If your folks do the same we might as well start right away—by the end of this week or the first of next, at the latest,” announced Meg.

“You needn’t worry about dresses or things like that,” added Lota. “We’ll probably just about live in riding togs.”

“What’s worrying me—” said Roy, and the married girls noticed how his eyes found and lingered upon Mollie. “What I’d like to know is, where do we come in?”

Lota looked at him in surprise.

“Oh,” she said carelessly, “perhaps you could come up for a little while later on.”

“Hooray!” cried Clem. “We’ll out-cowboy the cowboys, fellows.”

“You bet!” said Hal Duckworth. “We’ll show those guys what riding really is!”

“Is that what you learn at Princeton?” teased Carolyn, and to punish her, the young fellow whirled her about the room in a wild dance, bringing up, breathless and panting, upon the divan at the far corner of the room.

The boys and girls had planned a hike up the river as a fitting climax to their big day. But the arrival of Mr. Sibley and the lumberman delayed the start until it was too late for a worth-while hike.

“We’ll have plenty of time for that up at New Moon Ranch, anyway,” said Irene blissfully. “Meg and Lota, your guardian is a dear!”