Wyn's Camping Days Part 20

"What's the matter with you?" demanded Wyn, who had hopped ash.o.r.e behind the chaperone.

"Professor Skillings is going back on us, boys," declared Dave.

"Why, Professor!" cried Ferdinand. "Where would you find in all the five zones such a set of boys as we-uns?"

"Five zones? Correct, my boy," declared the professor, seriously. "But name those five zones; will you, please?"

"Sure!" wheezed Tubby, before Ferd could reply. "Temperate, Intemperate, Ca.n.a.l, Torrid, and Ozone."

"Goodness gracious, Agnes!" gasped Dave. "Can you beat Tubby when he lays himself out to be real erudite?" while the others--even the professor and Mrs. Havel--could not forbear to chuckle.

But Dave and Ferd got busy at once while the others laughed, and chaffed, and looked over the boys' camping arrangements. Dave was cook and Ferd made and fed the fire. These boys had all the approved Scout tricks for making fire and preparing food--they could have qualified as first-cla.s.s scouts.

Ferd started for an armful of wood he had cut down at the bottom of the steep bank and suddenly, without any warning whatsoever, he slipped, his feet pointed heavenward, and he skated down the bank upon the small of his back.

"My goodness me!" exclaimed Frank Cameron. "Did you see that?"

"Sure," said Dave, amid the laughter of the crowd. "Poor Ferdy! the whole world is against him!"

"You bet it is," growled Ferd, picking himself up slowly at the bottom of the bank. "And it's an awful hard world at that."

"Come on! Come on!" whined Tubby Blaisdell. "Aren't you ever going to get supper? You're wasting time."

Dave was expertly cleaning fish. Wyn ran to his help, finding the flour, cracker-crumbs, and salt pork. The pan was already heating over the blaze that the unfortunate Ferdinand had started in the fireplace.

"If you're so blamed hungry," said Dumont to the wailing Tubby, "start on the raw flour. It's filling, I'll be bound."

"Say! I don't just want to get filled. I want to enjoy what I eat. I could be another Nebuchadnezzar and eat gra.s.s, if it was just _filling_ I wanted."

"Ha!" cried Dave. "Tubby is as particular as the Western lawyer--a perfectly literal man--who entered a restaurant where the waiter came to him and said:

"'What'll you 'ave, sir? I 'ave frogs' legs, deviled kidneys, pigs'

feet, and calves' brains.'

"'You look it,' declared the lawyer man. 'But what is that to me? I have come here to eat--don't tell me your misfortunes.'"

Amid much laughter and chaffing they finally sat down to the fish-fry--and if there is anything more toothsome than perch, fresh from the water, and fried crisply in a pan with salt pork over the hot coals of a campfire, "the deponent knoweth not," as Frank Cameron put it.

Then Tubby got his banjo, Dumont his mandolin, Dave his ocarina, and they sang, and played, and told jokes, until a silver crescent moon rising over the lake warned them that the hour was growing late. The feminine visitors then boarded the _Happy Day_ and under the escort of Dave and Ferdinand to work the boat, the girls and their chaperone made the run back to Green Knoll Camp, giving the cove where Polly Jarley had caught the perch a wide berth.

Dave insisted upon going ash.o.r.e at Green Knoll and searching the camp "for possible burglars," as he laughingly said.

"Do, _do_ look under my bed, Dave!" squealed Frank, in mock distraction. "I've always expected to find a man under my bed."

"But it was real nice of him, just the same," admitted Mina Everett, when the _Happy Day_ had chugged away. "I feel a whole lot better now that he has beaten up the camp."

On the next morning Grace and Percy were not allowed to lag over the breakfast dishes till all hours.

"This shall be no lazy girls' camp," declared Mrs. Havel. "The quicker you all get your tasks done, the better. Then you can have games, and go fishing, and otherwise enjoy yourselves."

The fish-fry they had enjoyed at Cave-in-the-Wood Camp the evening before had given them all an appet.i.te for more, and as Polly Jarley appeared early, according to promise, Wyn began to bustle around and hunt out the fishing tackle.

There probably wasn't a girl in the crowd who was afraid to put a worm on a hook, save Mina. She owned up to the fact that they made her "squirmy" and she hated to see live bait on a hook.

"But that's what we have to use for lake fish--or river fish, either,"

Wyn told her. "You're not going to be much good to this fishing party."

"I know it, Wynnie. And I sha'n't go," said the timid one. "Mrs. Havel is not going fishing, and I can stay with her."

"You'll have company," snapped Bessie Lavine. "I'm sure _I'm_ not going," and she said it with such a significant look at Polly Jarley, who had come ash.o.r.e, that the boatman's daughter, as well as the other girls, could not fail to understand _why_ she made the declaration.

"Why, Bess Lavine!" exclaimed Frankie, the outspoken.

Polly's face had flushed deeply, then paled. Bess had avoided her before; but now she had come out openly with her animosity.

"Is your name Miss Lavine?" asked the boatman's daughter, her voice quivering with emotion.

"What if it is?" snapped Bess.

"Then I guess I know why you speak to me so----"

"Don't flatter yourself, Miss! I don't care to speak to you," said Bess.

"Nor do I care to have anything to do with you," said Polly, plucking up a little spirit herself under this provocation. "You are Henry Lavine's daughter. I am not surprised at your speech and actions. He has done all he could to hurt my father's reputation for years--and you seem to be just like him."

"Hurt your father's reputation--Bosh!" cried Bess. "You can't spoil a----"

But here Wyn Mallory came to the rescue.

"Stop, Bess! Don't you pay any attention to what she says, Polly. If this quarrel goes on, Bess, I shall tell Mrs. Havel immediately. You come with us, Polly; if Bessie doesn't wish to go fishing, she can remain at camp. Come, girls!"

Bess and Mina remained behind.

"I told you how 'twould be, Miss Wyn," said Polly, her eyes bright and hard and the angry flush in her cheek making her handsomer than ever. "I shall only make trouble among your friends."

"You don't notice any of the rest of us running up the red flag; do you?" interposed Frank Cameron. "Bess's crazy."

"The Lavines have been our worst enemies--worse than Dr. Shelton," said Polly, with half a sob. "Mr. Lavine is up here at the lake in the spring and fall, usually, and he will always talk to anybody who will listen about his old trouble with father. And he is an influential man."

"Don't you cry a tear about it!" exclaimed Frank, wiping her own eyes angrily.

Wyn had put a comforting arm over the shoulder of the boatman's daughter. "We'll just forget it, my dear," she said, gently.

But it was not so easy to forget--not so easy for Polly, at least, although the other girls treated her as nicely as they could. Her face remained sad, and she could not respond to their quips and sallies as the fleet of four canoes and Polly's skiff got under weigh.

Polly pulled strongly along the sh.o.r.e in her light craft; but of course the canoes could have left her far behind had the girls so wished. Their guide warned them finally against loud talking and splashing, and soon they came to a quiet cove where the trees stood thickly along the lake sh.o.r.e, and the water was not much ruffled by the morning breeze.

Polly had brought the right kind of bait for perch, and most of the girls of the Go-Ahead Club had no difficulty in arranging their rods and lines and casting for the hungry fish. Perch, "shiners," roaches, and an occasional "bullhead" began to come into the canoes. These latter scared some of the girls; but they were better eating than any of the other fish and both Wyn and Frank, as well as Polly, knew how to take them off the hook without getting "horned."