it is rather looking for
trouble? Why, I shouldn't dream of allowing Betty to consider the fellow
seriously. I'll tell him not to come to the house again, as I did that
other youth, if you say the word. Anyhow, I'll give Betty a piece of my
mind tonight."

"You won't do any such a thing, Richard Ashton," Esther remarked firmly,
actually shaking the young man's arm to express her scorn of his
stupidity, "for if you do you will involve us all in a great deal of
discomfort if nothing worse. In the first place I don't think Betty yet
dreams that she is beginning to care seriously for this young German and
perhaps she won't if no one says anything to her. But from what Polly
and I have seen she does like him a great deal already and she tries to
see him by himself without Polly or me. And you know that isn't in the
least like the Princess. But she is awfully interested in her Camp Fire
club in the village and perhaps if you take her home pretty soon
nothing serious will happen. Lieutenant von Reuter is awfully poor, I
know, and everybody says he simply has to marry a rich girl. But I don't
know which I should hate the most: to have Betty care for him and he not
return her affection or to have them both care and----"

"For goodness' sake, don't say another word, Esther, or I shall take the
next train back home and sit and watch every breath Betty draws for the
rest of the day," Dick answered miserably. "Please remember that I have
a particularly hard lecture on anatomy in another hour. But I shall meet
you on the train going out this afternoon and perhaps we can think up
some plan of campaign together."

CHAPTER XIV

Betty's Strange Disappearance

When Dick and Esther returned home just before dusk on that same
afternoon, Betty was not there. They found Mrs. Ashton in tears from
nervousness and fright, Polly O'Neill divided between anger and
solicitude, and only Miss Adams sufficiently composed to have been
making the necessary investigations.

So far as the newcomers could learn Betty had left the cottage at about
eleven o'clock in the morning to go to the village of Waldheim for the
work with the Camp Fire club which she had recently organized. But
instead of waiting for Polly to accompany her after their regular custom
she had seemed restless and in a most unusual hurry, and when Polly
happened to be ten or fifteen minutes late for their appointment, Betty
had gone off without her, taking their little German