Tubby, rolling his eyes.

"_All_ the firewood you use?" repeated one of the other boys.
"Why--that will be cords and cords!"

"Every stick!" declared Wyn, firmly.

"And I'd be ashamed, if I were you, to complain," pursued Bessie. "If
you had been gentlemanly you would have offered to cut our wood before.
You know that that is the _one_ thing that girls can't do easily
about a camp."

"Gee! you have quite a heap of stove wood yonder," said Tubby.

"That is what Mr. Jarley cut for us," Wyn said. "But it doesn't matter
what other means we may have for getting our firewood cut. Will you
accept the forfeit like honorable gentlemen?"

"Why, we've _got_ to!" cried Ferd.

"We're honestly caught," admitted Dave Shepard. "I'll do my share. Two
of us, for half a day a week, can more than keep you supplied--unless
you waste it."

"And we can have the canoes back?" demanded one of the other Busters,
eagerly.

And so it was agreed--"signed, sworn to, and delivered," as Frankie
said. With great glee the girls led the Busters to the steep bank by the
waterside, over which a great curtain of wild honeysuckle hung. This
curtain of fragrant flowers and thick vines dragged upon the ground.
There was a hollow behind it that Wyn had discovered quite by chance.

And this hollow was big enough to hide the six canoes, one stacked a-top
of the other. One passing by would never have suspected the hiding
place, and in hiding the craft the girls had left no tell-tale
footprints.

So, for once at least, the Go-Aheads got the best of the Busters.

CHAPTER XVII

VISITORS

Bessie Lavine had written home, as she said she would, regarding her
adventure with Wyn when they were overturned by the squall, and all
about Polly Jarley. But the result of this letter--and the others that
went along to Denton with it--was not just what the girls had expected.

Although Mrs. Havel, in charge of the Go-Aheads, reported regularly to
her brother-in-law, Percy's father, the story of the overturn made a
great stir among the mothers especially, whose consent to the six girls
living under canvas for the summer had been gained with such difficulty.

"What do you know about this, girls?" cried Frank, on next mail day. "My
mother and father are coming out here. They can stay but one night; but
they say they must see with their own eyes just how we are living here."

"And my Uncle Will is coming," announced Grace. "What do you know about
_that_?