CHAPTER II
THE BUSTERS

The girls could overlook the lower slope of the long roof through the bay window at the end of the living room. They crowded to it after Percy Havel, and beheld a most amazing as well as ridiculous sight.

A very fat youth, in a blue and white striped sweater and with a closely-cropped yellow head, was face down upon a length of plank, which plank was sliding like a bobsled down the incline of green-stained shingles.

“It’s Tubby!” gasped Frank Cameron.

“Oh! oh! oh!” squealed Mina. “Is he doing that for fun?”

Before any further comment could be made, the boy on the plank shot out over the edge of the roof and dived, with a mighty splash, into the deep water of the pool, adjoining which Canoe Lodge was built.

“He’ll be drowned!” cried Grace, wringing her plump hands.

“It’ll serve him right if he is!” exclaimed Bessie. “What business had he on our roof, I want to know?”

“Poor Tubby!” cried Wyn, choked with laughter.

“Isn’t he the most ridiculous creature that ever was?” rejoined Frank. “See there! he’s come up to blow like a frog.”

“It’s a whale that comes up to blow,” Wyn reminded her.

“Well! isn’t Tubby Blaisdell a regular whale of a boy?” returned the black-eyed girl.

“There’s Dave!” cried Mina.

“I knew the two wouldn’t be far apart!” sniffed Bess Lavine.

“He’s got a boat and is going to Tubby’s rescue,” cried Grace.

“But see Tubby flounder around!” Frankie observed. “Why! that boy couldn’t sink if you filled his pockets with flatirons!”

“There! he is going under,” ejaculated the more timorous Mina.

“Dave will get him, all right,” declared Wyn, with confidence.

She and Dave Shepard had been good chums since they were both in rompers. Her girl friends might tease Wyn sometimes about Dave; but the girl had no brothers and Dave made up the loss to her in every way.

“Oh! he’s going to spear him with that boathook!” gasped Mina again.

And really, it looked so. Tubby Blaisdell was splashing about in the pool before the canoe landing like a young grampus. Tubby was always getting into more or less serious predicaments, and he always “lost his head” and usually had to be aided by his friends.

In this case Dave Shepard prepared to literally spear him in the water. Dave–who was a tall, athletic boy, with a frank, pleasant face, if freckled, and close-cut brown curls in profusion–had driven the flat-bottomed skiff he had obtained from a neighboring landing, across the pool, and now, standing erect in the boat, with a single lunge impaled upon the boathook the tail of Tubby’s coat.

His chum was going down, as Dave thrust the boathook; for the unfortunate victim of the accident had swallowed a quantity of water when he dived with the plank from the eaves of the roof of Canoe Lodge. There was no time to lose if Dave wished to rescue Tubby before serious injury resulted to the unfortunate fat youth.

It was something of a feat to bring Tubby Blaisdell alongside the skiff and haul him inboard without overturning the boat. But Dave accomplished it to the admiration of the girls–even to Bessie’s satisfaction.

“Well, I’m glad he got Tubby out,” said that damsel, nodding her head.

“Glad to know that you are so humane, Bess,” laughed Frank.

The girls trooped out to learn at closer range if the Blaisdell youth was really injured or only exhausted.

He lay panting like a big fish in the bottom of the skiff. It was altogether too cold an evening for him to be exposed in his wet clothing. When the skiff’s nose bumped into the shore, Dave Shepard leaped out with alacrity and secured the painter to a post.

“Get up out of there, Tubby!” he commanded. “You’ll get your death of dampness. Come on!”

“Oh–oh–oh! I can’t,” chattered the fat youth. “I–I’m fr-roze to the ve-ry mar-row of m-m-my bones!”

“The chill has struck in awful deep, then, Tubby,” cried Frank Cameron, from the river bank.

“Come on out of that!” commanded Dave. “I’m going to run you home so that you will not get cold.”

“Me?” chattered Blaisdell, rising like a turtle out of its shell. “Run me home? Wh-wh-why, I c-c-couldn’t do it. You know I couldn’t r-r-run that far, Dave.”

“He must go right in by our fire and get warm,” declared Wyn, quickly. “Get your things, girls, and we’ll all go home and leave Dave and Tubby to enjoy that nice fire Grace built.”

“That wet boy all over our nice rug!” exclaimed Bessie. “I object.”

“Don’t be hateful, Bess,” admonished Grace.

“But what was he doing on our roof?” demanded the girl who claimed that she did not like boys.

At this Dave burst into a great laugh and was scarcely able to drag Tubby ashore.

“It’s a wonder he didn’t come right through on our heads,” complained Frank. “He’s so heavy.”

“But he would do it,” declared Dave, still laughing as he helped his fat friend up the bank to the door of Canoe Lodge. “It would have been a real good trick, too, if Tubby hadn’t slipped.”

“Always up to mischief!” sniffed Bessie Lavine. “That’s why I dislike boys so.”

“I don’t see what he could do on our roof,” said Wyn, wonderingly.

“And he had no business there!” cried Grace.

“Why,” explained Dave, for Tubby could not defend himself. “We saw Grace making the fire, and we knew the wood was green. It made a big smudge coming out of the chimney, and Tubby thought he had a brilliant idea.”

“I know!” exclaimed Frankie. “He had that plank to put over the top of our chimney. We’d have been smoked out, sure enough.”

“That’s it,” chuckled Dave. “Tubby got up all right, and he got the plank up all right. But just as he tried to lift the plank to the top of the chimney his foot slipped, the board dropped, he fell on it as if he was coasting down hill, and–you saw the rest!”

“Oh–oh!” chattered Tubby. “Come on in and let me get–get to–to th-that f-f-fire. I’m frozen!”

“Here’s the key, Dave,” said Wyn, laughing (for the fat youth did look so funny), “and you can lock up when you go home and bring the key to my house. Don’t you boys make a mess in here for us to clean up,” she added.

“But they will. Boys always do,” declared Bessie Lavine.

“Well, thank goodness, it won’t be my turn to clean up after them, or make another fire,” declared Grace.

“They will do no damage,” returned Wyn, with assurance, as the girls trooped away from the boathouse toward the town.

“They have to keep their camp clean,” declared Frank. “I know that. Professor Skillings may be forgetful; but he is very particular about that. Ferdinand Roberts told me so.”

“I expect those horrid Busters do know a lot more than we do about camping.”

“Indeed they do,” sighed Grace. “How’ll we ever put up a tent big enough to house seven?”

“The boys will help us,” declared Wyn.

“I expect we’ll have to let them,” grumbled Bess. “Or else pay a man to do it for us.”

“My goodness me!” laughed Frances Cameron. “It must be a dreadful thing to hate boys like Bess does! They’re awfully bad sometimes, I know – ”

“Look at what those two boys tried to do to us this very evening,” exclaimed Bessie.

“Oh, Tubby’s always up to some foolishness,” said Percy, laughing.

“And that Dave Shepard is just as bad!” cried Bess Lavine, tossing her head.

“Wyn won’t agree with that statement,” chuckled Frank.

“And all six of the Busters are full of mischief,” went on the complaining one. “I wish they were not going to the same place we are to camp.”

“Why, Bess!” exclaimed Mina.

“I do wish that. They’ll be around under foot all the time. And they’ll play tricks, and be rough and rude, and I know they will spoil the summer for us.”

“You go on!” came from Frank, with some scorn. “I guess I can hold up my end against the Busters.”

“Just wait and see,” prophesied Bessie, shaking her head. “I feel very sure that, the Busters and the Go-Ahead Club will not get along well together at Lake Honotonka.”

“It takes two parties for an argument,” said Wyn Mallory, quietly. “And in spite of their mischief I believe in the Busters.”

“Wait and see if what I say isn’t true!” snapped Bessie, and turned off into a side street toward her own home.

CHAPTER III
POLLY

Wyn Mallory was one of those girls whom people called “different.”

Not that there was a thing really odd about her. She was happy, healthy, more than a little athletic, of a sanguine temperament, and possessed a deal of tact for a girl of her age.

But there was a quality in her character that balanced her better than most girls are. That foundation of good sense on which only can be erected a lasting character, was Wyn’s. She was just as girlish and “fly-away” at times, as Frances Cameron herself, or Percy Havel; but she always stopped short of hurting another person’s feelings and she seemed to really enjoy doing things for others, which her mates sometimes acclaimed as “tiresome.”

And don’t think there was a mite of self-consciousness about all this in Wyn Mallory’s make-up, for there wasn’t. She enjoyed being helpful and kind because that was her nature–not for the praise she might receive from her older friends.

Wyn was a natural leader. Such girls always are. Without asserting themselves, other girls will look up to them, and copy them, and follow them. Whereas a bad, or ill-natured, or haughty girl must have some means of bribing the weak-minded ones to gain a following at all.

The Mallory family was a small one. Wyn had a little sister; but there was a difference of twelve years between them. The family was a very affectionate one, and Papa Mallory, Mamma Mallory, and Wyn all worshipped at the shrine of little May.

So when at supper that Friday evening something was said about certain drygoods needed for the little one, Wyn offered at once to spend her Saturday forenoon shopping.

She had plenty to do that morning; Saturday morning is always a busy time for any school girl in the upper grades, and Wyn was well advanced at Denton Academy. But she hastened out by nine o’clock and went down town.

Denton was a pretty town, with good stores, a courthouse, well stocked library and several churches of various denominations. In the center was an ancient Parade Ground–a broad, well-shaped public park, with a huge flagstaff in the middle of the main field, and Civil War cannon flanking the entrances.

Denton had a history. On this open field the Minute Men had marched and counter-marched; and before Revolutionary days, even, the so-called “train-bands” had paraded here. Like Boston Common, Denton’s Parade Ground was a plot devoted for all time to the people, and could be used for no other purpose but that of a public park.

The streets that bordered the three sides of the Parade Ground (for it was of flat-iron shape) were the best residential streets of the town; yet Market Street–the main business thoroughfare–was only a square away from one side of the park.

Wyn Mallory on this bright May morning walked briskly along the shaded side of the park and turned off at Archer Street to reach the main stem of the town, where the shops stood in rows and the electric cars to Maynbury had the right of way in the middle of the street.

Her very first call was at Mr. Erad’s drygoods and notion store. His shop was much smaller than some of the modern “department” stores that had of late appeared in Denton; but the old store held the conservative trade. Mr. Erad had been in trade, at this very corner, from the time he was a smooth-faced young man; and now his hair and beard were almost white.