a good plan to have you on the ground,
Grace. You can let me know if anything happens. Now I must see what I
can do about this. If only I could find Paddy Malone, and he could
testify about the changed boundary lines, I'd have none of this
trouble," and Mr. Ford sighed.

"Maybe we can find him up there, papa," said Grace, softly.

"Maybe; but I doubt it. I've been trying for a year to locate him, and
can't. But never mind. Don't let this bad news worry you. You and your
chums can go there all right, and have a good time. Maybe you'll have
more of a time than you want. It looks as though we would have a hard
winter."

CHAPTER VI

PREPARATIONS

"How many dresses are you going to take?"

"I wonder if we ought to bring along something for evening wear?"

"Anyhow we want something warm."

"And what about shoes--or boots? How would it do to wear leggings, like
the boy scouts?"

"I'm sure we won't want anything like evening dresses. Where could we
wear them up in the wilderness?"

"Why, perhaps there may be a lumbermen's dance."

"Oh, listen to Mollie! As if we'd go!"

"Why not? Of course we could go if we had a chaperone," and Mollie, who
had proposed this, looked rather defiantly at her chums.

The other foregoing remarks had been shot back and forth so quickly, in
such zig-zag fashion, that it was difficult to tell who said which; in
many cases the authors themselves being hardly able to identify their
verbal creations.

The girls were at the home of Grace, discussing, as they had been doing
ever since it was practically decided that they were to go to camp, what
they should take, and what to wear. It was far from being settled yet.

"Well, I'm sure of one thing," remarked Grace, "and that is that, as Amy
says, we ought to have at least two warm cloth dresses."

"An extra skirt, too, would be no harm," added Betty. "If we go out in
deep snow the skirt is sure to get wet, and then we could change on
coming in."

"Yes, I think that would be wise," admitted Mollie. "I am almost tempted
to wear--bloomers!"

"Mollie Billette!"

"I don't care," and she spoke defiantly. "More and more girls are coming
to wear them. Why, if we wear them in the school gym. I don't see any
harm in using them when we go camping."

"But up there--where we may meet a lot of rough lumbermen, who wouldn't
understand--I'd like it, really I would," confessed Betty. "But I guess
we'd better not. It's different here, and at