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Then, when the fire bells sounded, and they learned what had happened, Danny and all the boys promised each other that they would keep the secret. "Well, Danny, I can't tell you how sorry I am," said Mr. Rugg, when the confession was over. "Sorry not only that Mr. Bobbsey's boathouse was burned, but because you have deceived me, and your good mother, and smoked in secret.
"The very thing," exulted Mignon. "Let me see; there are nine of us. That will be three in a canoe. I'll hire the canoes and tell the man to send the bill to my father." With quick, catlike springs, she ran lightly down the bank, across the road and disappeared into the boathouse.
Andy Foger advanced slowly. He took the bunch of keys and looked at the tag. "They are mine," he said slowly, as if there was some doubt about it. "Of course they are," declared Tom. "I found them where you dropped them in my boat." "Do you mean over at the auction?" "No, I mean down in my boathouse, where you sneaked in the other night and tried to do some damage. "The other night!" cried Andy.
"That's the last chocolate. I must get some more for to-night. Who's going downtown?" They all were, it developed, and on the way Betty stopped at the railroad freight office and arranged to have a man sent to the boathouse to crate the Gem. Then it could be taken to the railroad on a truck. "And what will we do with it when we get to Bentonville?" asked Amy.
"I must apologize," said Steel, with an artificiality which was seldom so transparent; "my only excuse is that you startled me out of my temper and my manners. And I was upset to begin with. I have a poor fellow in rather a bad way in the boathouse."
"I wonder if Ham and Carl will attempt to get at our outfit," said Shep, the evening before the start was to be made. "Well, we mustn't forget that they blew up the old boathouse before," answered Snap. "Of course, they may be afraid to try on the same thing -they'd know they'd be in danger of arrest." "Let us go down and take a look at the things," put in Whopper.
It seems but yesterday that we used to warp the Idler in there when summer was over, get the chains under her, and block her up for the winter. She spent the winter on one side of the slip; the Sea Mist, a clumsy craft that couldn't stir short of a half gale, spent the winter on the other side. Over them, on racks, the rowboats were slung. There was a larger boathouse for the big fellows.
"Good!" exclaimed the chief heartily; "That's what I like to hear. But it's as certain as guns is, and nothing more certain than them, that some one was smoking in your boathouse, and set fire to it. And I wish we could find out who it was." "So do I!" exclaimed Mr. Bobbsey. "If only to teach them a lesson on how dangerous it is to be careless.
The cove made a fine bathing place, and the boathouse was his dressing room, though the fragrance of the ancient fish nets stored within it was not that of attar of roses. A cheap bathing suit was one of the luxuries Atkins had bought for him, by request, in Eastboro. Seth bought the suit under protest, for he scoffed openly at his helper's daily bath.
They had gone perhaps about halfway down the hill toward the boathouse when a big bay horse, drawing a light wagon in which were three boys, came quickly around a turn in the road. It bore down on them so suddenly that only by a rapid scramble up the bank by the side of the road did Rand and Donald save themselves from being bowled over.
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