Part 13 (1/2)

”Me, too. He was pushed overboard by Purt, and it just served Purt right that he went into the water,” Bobby declared.

The mongrel cur had swum n.o.bly for the sh.o.r.e. Before Purt was dragged aboard by Art the dog was nearing his goal.

They were well above the town of Lumberport now, and the sh.o.r.e along here was a shelving beach. After fighting the current the dog would have been unable to drag himself out had the bank been steep.

”He's done it!” exclaimed Liz, eagerly. ”Well! I declare I'm glad.”

”Gladder than you were over Purt?” chuckled Bobby.

”Well, if you ask me,” drawled the maid-of-all-work, ”I think the dog's wuth a whole lot more than that silly feller in the green pants.”

”How horrid!” e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Lily.

”Gee!” said Bobby. ”Don't you know, Lizzie, that there is only _one_ Pretty Sweet? I don't suppose you could find another fellow like him if you combed the zones of both hemispheres.”

”Hear! hear!” drawled Jess. ”How many zones do you suppose there are, Bobs?”

”Oh, a whole bunch of them,” declared the reckless Bobby. ”There's one torrid, two temperate, two frigid, and a lot of postal zones.”

”How smart!” sneered Lily, in no very good temper.

Meanwhile the dog had crawled out of the water. They saw him shake himself and then sink upon the sh.o.r.e, evidently exhausted.

”Well,” said Laura, ”I guess Purt has finally gotten rid of the poor creature. But it was too funny for anything.”

The sh.o.r.es of Rocky River, as they advanced, were very pretty indeed.

There were several suburban villages near Lumberport; but the farther they sailed up the stream the less inhabited the sh.o.r.es were and the wilder the scenery became.

”My!” e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Dorothy. ”I had no idea this country was really so _woodsy_.”

”You know there is scarcely anything but forest south of us, until you reach the B. & P. W. Railroad.”

”Maybe there are bad people up in these woods, after all,” suggested the timid Nell.

”Never you mind. Purt's got his revolver,” chuckled Jess. ”Lance says that it is one that hasn't been fired for twenty years and belonged to Purt's father.”

”Goodness!” exclaimed Laura. ”I _shall_ be afraid of that. It's those old guns that n.o.body supposes are loaded, that are always going off and killing the innocent bystander. You ought to confiscate that gun, Chet.”

”Don't worry,” returned her brother, laughing. ”I've taken the trigger screw out of Purt's gun and he couldn't shoot it if he had forty cartridges in it. But I haven't told Purt, for the dear boy seems to place implicit confidence in the old gat as a defense against anything on two or four legs in the Big Woods.”

CHAPTER IX

THE CAMP ON ACORN ISLAND

Although it was high noon when they were at Lumberport the Girls of Central High and their boy friends had not lunched there. Indeed, they waited to reach a certain pleasant grove which some of them knew about, on the south sh.o.r.e of the river, and several miles above the spot where Purt Sweet had taken his involuntary ducking.

As the motorboats put ash.o.r.e and the boys tied them to stubs in the high bank, they all began joking Purt about his plunge into the river.

The dude had been obliged to exchange his natty outing suit of Lincoln green for a suit of oil-stained overalls that he found in the cabin of the _d.u.c.h.ess_. He could not find his own baggage, as the boys with him had hidden it.