The Meadow-Brook Girls on the Tennis Courts; Or, Winning Out in the Big Tournament

  Produced by Stephen Hutcheson, Rod Crawford, Dave Morganand the Online Distributed Proofreading Team athttps://www.pgdp.net

  The Meadow-Brook Girls on the Tennis Courts

  OR Winning Out in the Big Tournament

  By JANET ALDRIDGE

  Author of the Meadow-Brook Girls Under Canvas, The Meadow-Brook Girls Across Country, The Meadow-Brook Girls Afloat, The Meadow-Brook Girls in The Hills, The Meadow-Brook Girls by The Sea, etc., etc.

  THE SAALFIELD PUBLISHING COMPANY Akron, Ohio New York Made in U. S. A.

  Copyright MCMXIV _By_ THE SAALFIELD PUBLISHING COMPANY

  CONTENTS

  Chapter. Page. I. Smoke Rings From the Hills 7 II. The Tramps Guard Their Secret 17 III. Keeping the Girls in Suspense 24 IV. An Unpleasant Surprise 33 V. The Tramp Club Receives a Shock 40 VI. A Discouraging Try-Out 48 VII. The Meadow-Brook Girls Change Their Minds 60 VIII. On the Service Line 69 IX. A Cloud with a Silver Lining 81 X. A Joy and a Disappointment 88 XI. A Blow That Nearly Killed George 99 XII. A Guest Who Was Welcome 114 XIII. In the Hands of a Master 123 XIV. A Steam Roller to the Rescue 137 XV. Would-Be Cup Winners Break Camp 147 XVI. In Camp on the Battle Field 156 XVII. The Cup That Lured 170 XVIII. What the Spy Learned 179 XIX. On the Tournament Courts 190 XX. A Welcome Disturbance 199 XXI. A Disaster in Camp 208 XXII. An Exciting Morning 216 XXIII. A Memorable Battle 227 XXIV. Conclusion 245

  The Meadow-Brook Girls on the Tennis Courts

  CHAPTER I SMOKE RINGS FROM THE HILLS

  "I want thome exthitement," complained Grace Thompson petulantly.

  "Have patience, Tommy," answered Jane McCarthy. "Did you ever know theMeadow-Brook Girls to go long without it?"

  "I don't know that we can look for anything exciting up here on this sidehill, surrounded by stumps, burned trees and blackened logs," returnedMargery Brown. "I shall just perish from doing nothing. We have been uphere nearly two days and nothing has happened. I should rather be down inthe meadows than up here in this dismal place."

  Miss Elting, the guardian of the party of girls encamped on the hillside,smiled tolerantly.

  "Wait," she advised.

  "I'll tell you what," suggested the towheaded Tommy. "Buthter, you arefat and round. We'll thcrape off a thmooth plathe all the way down thethide of the hill, then you roll down to the bottom. That will give youexthitement and make uth laugh, too."

  "But there is a jumping-off place at the bottom," objected Margery. "Ishould fall down on the stones."

  "Yeth, I know. But that would be exthitement and make uth laugh. Whythhould you be fat, if it ithn't to make other folkth laugh?"

  Margery elevated her nose disdainfully.

  "Do it yourself," she answered.

  "Yes, Tommy. You wish excitement. Suppose you run down and jump into thecreek at the bottom of the hill," called Harriet Burrell, raising aflushed face from the fire over which she was cooking their supper. "Rundown and jump in. If the water is deep, you might pretend you aredrowning; then Margery will rush to your rescue and save you. Drowning isexciting enough. I know, for I was nearly drowned once."

  "I fear a little trout stream at the foot of a hill would not prove veryexciting to a girl who has been lost at sea for hours on a dark night,"observed the guardian. "You will have to think of something else,Harriet. Are you, too, suffering from inactivity?"

  "Not at all. Miss Elting," answered Harriet brightly. "I came out herewith you for the sake of the outing, for the fresh air and the birds andthe odors of----"

  "Burned stumps," finished Margery. "The whole place smells like a countrysmoke-house, where the farmer smokes his hams for the winter. Ugh!"

  "As far as I am concerned," resumed Harriet Burrell, "I am not lookingfor excitement. I am enjoying myself thoroughly. What is more, were Ilooking for the unusual, I do not think it would be necessary to look farfor it."

  Tommy regarded her companion with narrowed eyes and wrinkled forehead.

  "Do you know thomething that we don't know, Harriet?"

  "Perhaps I do and perhaps not," was the evasive reply. "Why don't you useyour eyes and your ears and your nose, you and Margery?"

  "My nose?" sniffed Buster. "That's the trouble. This horrible, smoky,burned smell makes me ill. When I shut my eyes I think the side of thehill is on fire right this minute, instead of a year or so ago, orwhenever it was."

  She gazed first down the slope to the valley below, where a slenderstream was to be seen threading its way through the blackened landscape,then up the hill to where the trees had begun to grow again after theforest fire had seared their leaves and blackened their young trunks. Thetrees were making a noble fight for life, the green at their tops showingthat some success had attended their unequal fight. Here and thereblackened slabs of granite protruded from the uninviting landscapebetween the camp of the young women and the denser forest beyond, whichthe fire had failed to reach. Still farther on the campers saw the roadthat led back to their homes at Meadow-Brook.

  The small tent, that had been packed in sections, had already taken onsomething of the dispiriting color of the landscape in which it had beenset. Within the tent the girls had leveled off the ground as well aspossible and dug deep trenches on the uphill side, so that they might notbe drowned out in case of a heavy rainstorm. They had chosen thisuninviting spot principally because it was different from any place inwhich they had made camp during their summer vacations of the past twoyears. They could easily shift to another location were they to tire ofthis one. One advantage of the present site lay in the fact that it wasremoved from human habitation by some miles. Their own homes lay abouttwelve miles to the eastward.

  Hazel Holland, the fifth girl of the Meadow-Brook Girls' party, also sawthat Harriet had something in mind. She walked over near the fire and satdown, regarding Harriet inquiringly.

  "What do you mean, Harriet?" she questioned.

  "I haven't said. Use your eyes. I am too busy getting supper now to makeany explanations. Haven't you girls seen anything unusual?"

  "Yes, I have," answered Margery. "Everything is unusual around here--toomuch so to suit my cultivated tastes."

  "There ith thome mythtery here," observed Tommy Thompson wisely.

  Miss Elting asked no question
s. She knew that Harriet would speak of whatwas in her mind when she was ready to do so. The supper was soon cooked,the dishes set on a blanket, which had been spread on a fairly levelplace. Other blankets had been laid down on which the girls took theirplaces with their feet curled underneath them. The dishes were mostly tinand paper, but the supper, smoking and steaming on the blanket, wassavory and appetizing. The girls forgot their dismal surroundings in thepleasure of eating what Harriet Burrell had prepared for them, thoughMargery did her best to look sour, in order to hide her satisfaction,while Tommy now and then regarded her with a smile.

  "I don't believe Buthter intendth to thtop eating to-night," was thelittle lisping girl's comment.

  "You stop making remarks about me," exploded Buster. "Didn't I tell you Ishould go right back home if you did it again this summer?"

  "Buthter never liketh to hear the truth about herthelf," averred Tommywith an impish grin.

  "The truth!" exclaimed the now angry Margery. "I'll never speak to youagain, Grace Thompson."

  "If you girls only knew how silly you are, you would reform," saidHarriet.

  "The only way for a fat perthon to reform ith to run all day in the hotthun," answered Tommy. "Why don't you try it, Buthter?"

  Margery glared speechlessly at her tormentor, but before she could framea fitting reply Hazel suddenly asked Harriet a question that quicklychanged the current of thought in the minds of the two disputants.

  "Perhaps you will tell us what you meant when you made that remark ashort time ago, Harriet," she said.

  "What remark, Hazel?"

  "About not having to look far for excitement, about using our eyes, earsand noses," replied Hazel. "What did you mean?"

  "Just what I said," repeated Harriet.

  "Be good enough to explain, pleathe?" urged Tommy. "I'm not clever atguething riddleth."

  "Had you girls used your ears, you would have heard something; had youused your eyes, you would have seen smoke; had you used your noses, youwould have smelled smoke. Now do you understand?"

  "Yeth, I underthtand," replied Tommy after a brief interval of silence.

  "What do you understand?" demanded Margery.

  "That Harriet ith lothing her mind. Maybe thhe'll find it under theblanketth."

  "More likely to find a snake under there," suggested Hazel, whereat therewere screams from Tommy and Buster, who sprang to their feet, gazing atthe ground with a frightened expression in their eyes. "Sit down if youwish any more supper," urged Hazel, laughing.

  "That wathn't funny in the leatht, Hathel," declared Grace severely. "Nowtell uth truthfully, Harriet, what you meant by hearing and theeing andthmelling thingth?"

  "Here, I will draw you a map." Harriet traced a square in the ashes witha stick, making a round dot in the lower left-hand corner. "This dot isthe camp of the Meadow-Brook Girls," she said. "At the extreme upper sideare the woods that you see over the brow of the hill, and these," makinga series of rings, "are smoke--smoke rings. Well, why doesn't some onesay something?" she chuckled.

  "Smoke rings?" questioned the guardian.

  "Yes, Miss Elting."

  "Where?"

  Harriet Burrell waved one hand toward the brow of the hill, giving theguardian a meaning look.

  "What do you mean?"

  "That we have neighbors," replied Harriet calmly.

  "Neighbors!" screamed Margery.

  "Where? who? what?" asked the girls in chorus.

  "Thave me! I thhould die of fright if I were to thee a thtrange humanbeing again," cried Tommy. "Do--do you think it ith a man, a real liveman?"

  Harriet Burrell nodded. Tommy's eyes grew larger.

  "I think it is. Perhaps more than one. Listen. I heard some one shoutshortly before I began getting the supper. Then as I was getting the firegoing I saw smoke rings rising from the forest up yonder. They were welldone and they were signals."

  "Indianth!" breathed Grace. "Grathiouth! We'll all be thcalped. Oh, thaveuth!"

  "I answered them by making some smoke signals. There wasn't enough smokein my fire, though, to do it very well."

  "So that is what you were up to?" laughed Jane McCarthy. "I thought youwere fanning the fire with the blanket."

  "I made the answering sign, which they answered in turn; then there wereno more smoke signals from either side. That is all I know about it."

  "Smoke signals," reflected the guardian. "I know of no one in these partswho would know how to make them. Do you?"

  "Well, no; no one whom we have reason to look for here at this time. ButI have my suspicions. If I am right, we shall know about it eitherto-night or early to-morrow morning."

  "Oh! tell us," begged Margery eagerly. "Please do tell us what youthink."

  "Pleathe don't," commanded Tommy sharply. "If I know, then I won't becuriouth any more. If I don't know, I'll lie awake all night thinking andguething about it, and oh, I tell you I'll enjoy it! I do love amythtery, and thith ith a mythtery, ithn't it, Harriet?"

  "We will call it that. No, not a word, girls; not another word to-night.I don't want to spoil Tommy's pleasant prospects. Think what a lot ofcomfort she will get out of worrying for fear that sometime during thenight a party of Indians may swoop down on us, cut off the top of Tommy'shead and run away with her flaxen locks."

  "Can you beat it?" glowed Jane McCarthy. "I almost have the shiversmyself."

  "If you girls persist in working up a fright, I see a nice case ofnightmare for some of you before morning," warned Miss Elting. "I aminclined to the belief that what you saw must be a camp of timbercruisers or lumbermen. There are no Indians up here, nor would any trampscome to this desolate place. Please don't be foolish. Go on with yoursupper and put aside this nonsense."

  "I don't want to put it athide!" exclaimed Tommy. "I jutht want to bethcared till I'm all fluthtered up; then I want to be thcared thomemore." Tommy leaped from the blanket and dived head first into theirlittle tent.

  At that moment a chorus of wild war-whoops rose from the bushes all aboutthem. Yell upon yell sounded, and a great threshing about in the bushessent the hearts of the Meadow-Brook Girls to their throats--so it seemedto them. Margery Brown, frightened nearly out of her wits, sprang up andstarted to run down the hill diagonally from the camp. She caught herfoot on the stub of a burned-off sapling, plunged headforemost and wentrolling down a sharp incline, her cries of alarm heard but faintly by hercompanions.