The Outdoor Girls of Deepdale Part 22

They broke into a run, but a moment later Grace cried:

"Too late! That tramp has it!"

The girls stopped in dismay, as they saw a rather raggedly-dressed man slink out from the shadow of a tree and pick up the lunch valise. He stood regarding it curiously.

"Oh, dear!" cried Grace. "And I was so hungry!"

Betty strode forward. There was a look of determination on her face.

She spoke:

"Girls, I'm not going to let that tramp take our lovely lunch. Come on, and I'll make him give it back!"

"Betty!" cried Amy. "You'd never dare!"

"I wouldn't? Watch me!"

The man was still standing there, looking at the valise as if in doubt whether or not to open it. Betty with a glance at her chums walked on.

They followed.

"That--that's ours, if you please," said Betty. Her voice was weaker than she had thought it would be, and quite wobbly, too. Her knees, she confessed later, were in the same state. But she presented a brave front.

"That--that's our lunch," she added, swallowing a lump in her throat.

The man--he certainly looked like a tramp, as far as his clothes were concerned, but his face was clean--turned toward the girls with a smile.

"Your lunch!" he exclaimed, and his voice was not unmusical, "how fortunate!"

He did not say whether it was fortunate for them--or himself.

"We--we forgot it. We left it here," explained Mollie. "That is, I left it here."

"That is--unfortunate," said the man. "It seems--it seems to be a fairly substantial lunch," and he moved the bag up and down.

"It ought to be--for four of us," breathed Amy.

"Allow me," spoke the man, and with a bow he handed the missing lunch to Betty. The girls said afterward that her hand did not tremble a bit as she accepted it. And then the Little Captain did something most unexpected.

"Perhaps you are hungry, too," she said, with one of her winning smiles, a smile that seemed to set her face in a glow of friendliness. "We are on a tramping tour--I mean a walking tour," she hastily corrected herself, feeling that perhaps the man would object to the word "tramp."

She went on:

"We are on a walking tour, visiting friends and relatives. We generally take a lunch at noon."

"Yes, that seems to be the universal custom," agreed the man. "That is, for some persons," and he smiled, showing his white teeth.

"Are you--are you hungry?" asked Betty, bluntly.

"I am!" He spoke decidedly.

"Then perhaps--I'm sure we have more here than we can eat--and we'll soon--I mean comparatively soon--be at a friend's house--perhaps--"

She hesitated.

"I would be very glad," and again the man bowed.

Betty opened the little satchel--it was a miniature suitcase--and a veritable wealth of lunch was disclosed. There were sandwiches without number, pickles, olives, chunks of cake, creamy cheese--

"Are you sure you can spare it?" asked the man. "I'm sure I don't want to--"

"Of course we can spare it," put in Mollie, quickly.

"Well then I will admit that I am hungry," spoke the unknown. "I am not exactly what I seem," he added.

Betty glanced curiously at him.

"Don't be alarmed," he went on quickly. "I am not exactly sailing under false colors except in a minor way. Now, for instance, you took me for a tramp; did you not?" He paused and smiled.

"I--I think we did," faltered Mollie.

"And I don't blame you. I have, for the time being, a.s.sumed the habiliments of a knight of the road, for certain purposes of my own. I am--well, to be frank, I am trying to find something. In order to carry out my plans I have even begged my way, and, not always successfully.

In fact--"

"You are hungry!" exclaimed Grace, and her chums said she made a move as though to bring out some chocolates. Grace, later, denied this.

"I am hungry," confessed the tramp--as he evidently preferred to appear.

Betty took out a generous portion of food.

"It is too much," the wayfarer protested.

"Not at all," Betty insisted. "We have a double reason for giving it to you. First, you are hungry. Second, please accept it as a reward for--"

"For not eating all of your lunch after I found it, I suppose you were going to say," put in the man, with a smile. "Very well, then I'll accept," and he bowed, not ungracefully.

He had the good taste--or was it bashfulness--to go over to a little grove of trees to eat his portion. Grace wanted to take him a cup of chocolate--which they made instead of tea--but Betty persuaded her not to. The girls ate their lunch, to be interrupted in the midst of it by the man who called a good-bye to them as he moved off down the road.

"He's going," remarked Amy. "I wonder if he had enough?"

"I think so," replied Betty. "Now, girls, we must hurry. We have been delayed, and--"

"I'm so sorry," put in Mollie. "It was my fault, and--"

"Don't think of it, my dear!" begged Grace. "Any of us might have forgotten the lunch, just as you did."

As they walked past the place which the tramp had selected for his dining room, Betty saw some papers on the ground. They appeared to be letters, and, rather idly, she picked them up. She looked into one or two of the torn envelopes.

"I wouldn't do that," said Grace. "Maybe those are private letters. He must have forgotten them. I wonder where he has gone? Perhaps we can catch him--he might need these papers. But I wouldn't read them, Betty."

"They're nothing but advertising circulars," retorted the Little Captain.

"Nothing very private about them. I guess he threw them all away."