“So do I,” agreed her sister.

That afternoon, calling his company of players together, Mr. Pertell said: 

“Friends, we will leave in two days for the interior.  I want to get some views along the rivers and bayous, where the scenery is wilder than it is here.”

“And where are we going, may I ask?” inquired Mr. DeVere.

“To a place called Sycamore, near Lake Kissimmee,” was the answer.

“Oh, Ruth!” exclaimed Alice, impulsively, when she heard this.

“Yes, dear, what is it?”

“Why, that’s where those two girls were from—­the ones who were lost, you know!”

“Hush!  Yes.  You know we agreed to say nothing about it, for fear of causing undue alarm.  Miss Pennington and Miss Dixon might refuse to go, you know,” she went on in a low voice, “and that would make trouble for Mr. Pertell.”

“Oh, but isn’t it a strange coincidence?” remarked Alice.

“It certainly is.  But perhaps the girls have been found by this time.”

“Our destination will be Lake Kissimmee,” proceeded Mr. Pertell.  “We will take some pictures on the lake, some on the Kissimmee River, that connects the lake of that name with Lake Okeechobee, and then we’ll go a little way into the wilds, on various streams.”

Ruth and Alice looked at each other apprehensively.

CHAPTER XII

A WARNING

“Beg pardon,” said Claude Towne, during a pause in which Mr. Pertell was consulting some notes he had jotted down, in order to make matters more clear to his players.  “Beg pardon, my dear sir, but are we going to a very wild part of this country?”

“Why, yes—­rather so,” was the not very reassuring answer.  “You probably won’t be able to get a room and bath at the hotel where we stop.”

“Oh, another one of those backwoods places,” murmured Miss Pennington.  “How horrid!”

“Is there any—­er—­any society there?” asked Mr. Towne.

“Hardly,” answered the manager, “unless you call the natives society.”

“Wretched!” exclaimed the dude, with a wry face.

“Hold on, though!” cried Mr. Pertell, “I believe that there are some of our first families there.”

“Ah, that is better,” replied Mr. Towne, adjusting his lavender tie.  “I shall include my evening clothes in my wardrobe, then.”

“I’d advise you to,” remarked Mr. Pertell, with an assumption of gravity.  “The Seminole Indians, to which I refer, are a very ancient and proud race, I understand, and doubtless a dress suit would appeal to them.  They are the first families of Florida!”

“Wretched joke!” muttered the actor.  “I think I shall not go into the interior.”

“Oh, I think you will,” retorted Mr. Pertell, easily.  “Your contract calls for it.”

“What about alligators?” asked Mr. Sneed.

“You know my offer—­a thousand dollars a big bite,” laughed the manager.  “But I don’t fancy we shall see half as many as you saw out at the alligator farm.  They are being hunted too fiercely for their skins to allow many to be around loose.  Don’t worry about them.