e launch as
handily as boys, and the next time Hester Grimes was dragged in. And a
madder girl than Hester it would have been hard to find!

"It's all your fault!" she concluded, shaking her sleek, black head at
the Lockwood twins. "You bumped right into us."

"And you turned your canoe so that we should bump you," said Dora,
tartly. "You were afraid of being beaten. I wish we'd smashed your old
canoe!"

"You'll have to pay for it if it's damaged," declared Hester, nodding
with determination.

But the boys who brought in the two canoes pricked the bubble of
Hester's rage: They told Mrs. Case and the professor just how the
trouble had occurred.

"You have no complaint, Hester," said Mrs. Case, later. "There are too
many witnesses against you. I am afraid you are not over-truthful in
this. However, I shall report the four of you for demerits. You had no
business to race. I have forbidden it. And you can see yourselves how
unfortunate interclass trials of speed may be. Now! no more of it, young
ladies!"

Hester went off with her nose in the air after somebody had brought her
dry clothing from home; but Lily Pendleton was grateful to the twins for
helping her.

"Though I declare! I don't know which of you to thank," she said,
giggling. "And one's just as wet as the other. Anyhow, I'm obliged."

"You're welcome, Lily," said one of the twins. "We are sworn to solemn
secrecy never to tell on each other; so you will have to embalm us both
in your gratitude."

Miss Pendleton was not quite all "gall and wormwood," as Bobby Hargrew
said Hester was; but the girls of Central High as a whole did not care
much for Lily because she aped the fashions of her elders, and tried to
appear "grown up." And when she came in from her unexpected dip in the
lake it was noticeable that her cheeks were much paler than they had
been when she started with her chum in the canoe. Because she had a
naturally pale complexion, Lily was forever "touching it up"--as though
even the most experienced "complexion artist" could improve upon Nature,
or could do her work so well that a careful observer could not tell the
painted from the real.

The twins went home in borrowed raincoats over their wet garments; nor
did they escape Aunt Dora's sharp eyes--and of course, her sharp tongue
was exercised, too.

"Now!" complained Dora, in their own room, "if our athletic field and
the building were constructed, we wouldn't have been caught. Every girl
is