nage to crawl there, if I am sure of a feed immediately."

The girls scrambled down the steep cliff side and began to unpack the
lunch. Joy chose a large granite rock in the middle of the stream and
perched thereon, she surveyed her surroundings.

"Isn't that a lovely copper stain? And to think it's coming from our
mine!" she enthused in a mocking tone, while the other girls unpacked
the lunch or hustled around to find sticks for a fire.

Their lunch preparations were to be quite elaborate, roast potatoes and
corn on the cob and steak. Enid and Kit built the fire with care and
soon a bed of coals was ready. While the two girls worked over the
fire and Shirley gave attention to spreading the feast, Bet sat on the
cliff, dreaming of the mine to be.

"This is adventure! This is romance!" she cried to her friends.

"Romance!" chuckled Joy. "It's not what I call romance."

"Dark brown eyes and a heavenly smile on the face of a boy, is your
only idea of romance. You are a silly girl!" Bet shrugged her boyish
shoulders and laughed at Joy as she undid her long rope, and standing
up straight, tried to send the loop over a stump in the manner approved
by Tommy Sharpe, her teacher. Her efforts were not very successful.
Out of twenty attempts she managed one that coiled over the spot that
she was aiming at. Bet decided then and there that she would not make
a good cowboy. While she practised the throw again and again, she
continued to talk to Joy who seemed half vexed as she snapped:

"You needn't talk about liking boys, Bet Baxter. I don't blush every
time the mail arrives and a letter is handed me. And you seem to have
no objection to dreamy brown eyes yourself. I've seen the way you
looked at Phil Gordon. Now Phil's eyes haven't got enough snap in them
for me--they're altogether too brooding to suit me. I think that young
Mexican's eyes are much more exciting."

"Why, Joy Evans, how dare you say that I like to look at Phil's eyes?
He's a dear boy, one of our best chums, but I don't think at all about
his eyes," retorted Bet.

"You don't think his eyes are nice? Answer me, Bet?" teased Shirley.

"They're all right I tell you, but I think you girls are just too
horrid trying to insinuate that I'm in love with Phil," protested Bet,
her face flushing, her blue eyes snapping with anger.

"We don't have to insinuate anything, Bet. You give yourself away
every time his name is mentioned," was Joy's emphatic