t, "when you were Sally's age, wasn't there
ever anything that you wanted to do or be with all your heart and soul?
Didn't you ever just want to get away from what you had been doing for
years, and start something new?"

"Well, come to think of it now," smiled Mrs. Peckham, "I'd have given my
eye-teeth to have left home and gone to be a teacher in some town."

"Then please let Sally do this. Cousin Roxy says she's willing to keep an
eye over everything, and one of us girls will probably be helping her out
most of the time, too. It would only be until the middle of September,
although if it wasn't too cold later on, we might be able to rent the
tents and outfits to the hunters when they come up. Piney'll be home for
vacation and Elvy and Sylvy can help you. They're eight years old now, and
Anne's fifteen and Charlotte's twelve. Why, it isn't fair to them to let
them think all Sally's good for is to stay at home and do housework. You
will let her go, won't you, Mrs. Peckham?"

Mrs. Peckham sighed and smiled at the same time.

"You're a fearful good pleader. I don't suppose it would hurt the other
girls any to take hold and help, but it's such a nuisance to have to teach
them everything when Sally can go right ahead. Still, I'm willing, and if
her father is, why, she can go. Seems as if you girls are starting
something you can't finish, but mebbe you can."

Piney Hancock had boarded in Willimantic that winter for her third year in
high school. So the girls had seen very little of her since the previous
September, but Kit rounded up the old members of the Hiking Club, and
welded them together into a sort of efficiency committee to help with the
summer plan.

CHAPTER XXV

COAXING THE WILDERNESS

The first part of April was unusually mild. A sort of balmy hush seemed to
lie over the barren land, as though spring had chosen to steal upon it
sleeping. Doris brought in the first violets on the fifteenth, with a few
wisps of saxifrage and ragged robin. Shad brought up a load of lumber from
the mill the same day, and started to make the flooring for the tents.

Second-hand army tents had been secured, and almost daily something was
added to the store of supplies for the summer venture. The next problem to
be solved was finding the occupants for the tents, and here it was Jean
who helped out.

"You don't want to get a lot of people," she wrote, "who will be expecting
all the comforts of a typical summer resort or