mes you have tried to trick _them_?"

"Huh!" snorted the fat youth. "Did I ever succeed?"

"I hope," said Mrs. Havel, breaking in upon this "give and take"
conversation, "that your parents will not blame me if you all
appear--both girls and boys--to have lost your good manners here in the
woods. Do simmer down. Remember, you return to civilization to-day."

"Oh, dear! don't remind us--don't, dear Mrs. Havel," cried Frank.

"Just think!" scoffed Ferd. "You girls will have to be all 'dolled up'
on Sunday again. Won't you _hate_ it?"

"Rather go around in a tramping skirt and without a hat," admitted Wyn,
frankly.

"The tastes of girlhood are much different now from what they were in
_my_ day," said the lady, with a sigh. "When I was young we never
thought of doing the things you girls do now."

"Isn't that why you didn't do them?" asked Frank, slily. "Perhaps we
girls of this generation have better-developed imaginations."

"Oh, sure!" cried Ferd, with sarcasm. "You girls are wonders--just as
smart as little Hen Rogers was last term when Miss Haley asked him if he
could name any town in Alaska."

"What did he say?" asked Frank, with interest.

"He said, 'Nome'--and she sent him to the foot of the class," chuckled
Ferd.

"Oh! aren't you smart?" railed Bessie. "That joke is the twin to the one
about the boy who was asked by the professor in physics if he knew what
'nasal organ' meant. And the boy said 'No, sir' and got a 'perfect'
mark."

"Come on, folks!" cried Wyn. "Stop telling silly jokes and bear a hand
here. All these things have to go into the boat."

Mr. Jarley and Polly joined them just then, Mr. Jarley to collect the
canoes and take them to the Forge, while Polly was to go with the two
clubs aboard the newly-named _Go-Ahead_ to Denton.

Polly, in a brand-new boating costume, was so pretty that the boys
couldn't keep their eyes away from her. She was happy, too, and this
fact gave an entirely different expression to her face.

She was to go home with Wyn, and in a few weeks her father would follow
and establish a home for them both in Denton. He was going, as Mr.
Lavine declared, to start in his old home town just where he had left
off more than ten years before. And Polly was to enter the academy with
the girls of Green Knoll Camp on the opening day.

The party got under weigh on the _Go-Ahead_ and were some miles
down the lake ere it was discovered that Professor Skillings had
forgotten both h