," said Nellie Agnew. "It _is_ a
beautiful spot."

"Acorn Island it is, then," cried Bobby. "Hurrah! We'll spend our
vacation there!"

She almost shouted this declaration. The girls had been lingering to
talk in the high school yard and were now at the gate. Nellie suddenly
tugged at Laura's sleeve and whispered:

"Look there! _what_ do you suppose is the matter with Professor
Dimp?"

Bobby spun around at the word, having heard the sibilant whisper. She
likewise stared at the rusty-coated gentleman who had just passed the
gate, having come from the main entrance of the Central High
building.

"Gee!" exclaimed the slangy Bobby. "What's got Old Dimple now? What
have _I_ ever done to him--except massacre the Latin language?--and
that's a 'dead one,' anyway!"

The Latin teacher--the bane of all careless and ill-prepared boys and
girls of the Latin class--was a slightly built, stoop-shouldered man
who never seemed to own a new coat, and was as forgetful as a person
really could be, and be allowed to go about without a keeper.

He often passed the members of his class on the street without knowing
them at all; the boys said you might as well bow to a post as to Old
Dimple!

But here he had taken particular notice of Bobby Hargrew; indeed, he
stopped to turn around and glare right at her--just as though she had
said something particularly offensive to him as he passed the group.

"Goodness!" murmured Jess. "If you're not in trouble with Gee Gee,
Bobs, you manage to get one of the other instructors down on you. What
have you done to the professor?"

"Nothing, I declare!" said Bobby, plaintively.

"If you'd murdered his grandmother he couldn't look any harder at
you," chuckled Dora Lockwood.

The professor suddenly saw that he had disturbed the party of
schoolgirls. He actually flushed, and turned hurriedly to move away.

As he did so he pulled a big, blue-bordered handkerchief from the tail
pocket of his frock-coat. That pocket was notably a "catch-all" for
anything the poor, absent-minded professor wished to save, or to which
he took a fancy. Once Short and Long (otherwise a very short boy named
Long) dropped a kitten into the professor's tail pocket and the
gentleman did not discover it until he reached for his bandana to wipe
his moist brow when he stood up to lecture his Latin class.

However, it was nothing like a kitten that followed the blue-bordered
handkerchief out of the voluminous skirt-pocket. A c