The Girls of Central High on Lake Luna Part 13

"Sure," laughed Eve. "A penny at a time!"

"No. I'm not joking. Write your letter. Give me the fifty cents. I'll find a safe way. Give me the half dollar now. I'll put the biscuits in the pans. Is the oven hot?"

"Pretty near."

"I'll try it--with one biscuit, anyway," chuckled Laura, seizing the half dollar her friend gave out of her purse.

In ten minutes Eve came dancing back from her room with the letter written.

"How you going to send the money, Laura?" she demanded. "Here's the letter--all ready."

"And the money will be ready in a minute or two. That oven's good and hot," said Laura.

"What do you mean?" gasped Eve. "You're not baking the half dollar?"

"Yes, ma'am," laughed Laura. "That's what I'm doing."

She dropped the range door and showed a small pan with one lonesome little biscuit in it.

"It's baking fine, too. I want it to be a hard, crusty one----"

"And you've baked the half dollar in the biscuit!" screamed Eve.

"That's what I've done. You just add a line to your letter to that effect. Then we'll put the letter and biscuit in that little box, tie it up, address it, and Lance Darby will run out to the road and mail it for you. Be quick now," concluded Laura, whisking the pan out of the oven, "for the half-dollar biscuit is done!'"

"What an original girl you are, Laura," said Eve, doing as she was bid.

"Who'd have thought of _that_ way to send coin in the mail?"

"Your Aunt Laura thought of it," laughed her friend. "For we want nothing to stand in your way of pa.s.sing that examination, Eve. We need you at Central High."

CHAPTER XI

THE BOAT IS FOUND

And that supper! It was something to be membered by the crowd from town.

Such thick, luscious yellow cream that Mother Sitz lifted from the pans of milk in the cement block "milk-house" most of the town-bred folk had never seen before. The biscuits and "short-cake" came out of the oven with just the right brown to them. The big berries were heaped upon the wedges of b.u.t.tered short-cake, and then cream poured over the berries, with plenty of sugar.

"Yum! Yum!" mumbled Lance Darby, with a huge mouthful obstructing his parts of speech. "Isn't this the Jim-dandiest lay-out you ever saw, Chet?"

"I never sat down to a better one," admitted his chum. "But please don't talk to me. Purt is getting more of the berries than I am--and he isn't talking at all. Just pa.s.s the sugar, Lance, and then shut up for a while."

But there was enough serious talk during the supper to arrange a return treat for Eve and Otto Sitz. The farmer boy and his sister had seldom been on Lake Luna and Laura and her brother suggested a trip by boat and canoe to Cavern Island for the following Sat.u.r.day.

"And no picnic luncheon at the park. That's too common," declared Jess Morse, eagerly. "Let's do something different."

"Trot out your 'different' suggestion, Josephine," said her chum.

"Let's go to the caves. Let's picnic there."

"Oh!" cried one of the Lockwood twins. "That's where we saw the 'lone pirate.'"

"The lone _what_?" rejoined Nellie Agnew. "What do you mean by that?"

The other twin explained how and when they had seen the bushy-headed, wild-looking man at the foot of Boulder Head.

"There's where the caverns open onto the sh.o.r.e, exactly," remarked Chet Belding. "Are you afraid of meeting the pirate, girls?"

"We'll capture him and make him walk the plank!" declared Bobby Hargrew.

"Hurrah for the pirate!"

So the trip to Cavern Island for the next Sat.u.r.day was arranged, Eve and Otto promising to join the party at Centerport. And the run home by automobile in the moonlight was enlivened by plans for the coming good time on the Lake.

Lance ran the sight-seeing automobile carefully and delivered it to Mr.

Purcell, the owner, in good season. The man who should have driven it, but who was taken ill, had been removed to the hospital from the inn in the woods.

"I understand one of those girls played the heroine and stopped the car," said the automobile owner.

"Yes, sir," replied Lance. "That was one of the Lockwood twins."

"Which one was it? I'd like to thank her, at least," said Mr. Purcell.

"Couldn't tell you," laughed Lance.

"Why couldn't you? Sworn to secrecy, young man?" demanded Mr. Purcell.

"No, sir. But the twins themselves seem to be. n.o.body knows them apart, and they won't tell on each other. One of them is the heroine, but which one n.o.body knows," and Lance Darby went off laughing.

Meanwhile the twins themselves walked briskly home from the schoolhouse where the party of young folk had separated. On the way they met a girl a little older than themselves, hurrying in the opposite direction.

"Here's Billy Long's sister, Alice," whispered Dora to Dorothy.

"Oh, dear me!" replied Dorothy. "I suppose she has had to work late at the paper box factory. And how she must feel----"

Her twin seized the factory girl's arm as she was hurrying past with just a little nod to the Lockwood twins.

"Alice Long!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Dora. "You're crying. What's the matter?"

"Oh, girls! you know about Billy, don't you?" cried Short and Long's sister.

"They haven't caught him?" cried Dorothy.

"No, no! I almost wish they would," sobbed Alice Long. "We don't know where he is. I've just been down to Mr. Norman's to see if the boat has been found."

"And it hasn't?" demanded one of the twins.