THE BUSTERS
The girls could overlook the lower slope of the long roof through the
bay window at the end of the living room. They crowded to it after Percy
Havel, and beheld a most amazing as well as ridiculous sight.
A very fat youth, in a blue and white striped sweater and with a
closely-cropped yellow head, was face down upon a length of plank, which
plank was sliding like a bobsled down the incline of green-stained
shingles.
"It's Tubby!" gasped Frank Cameron.
"Oh! oh! oh!" squealed Mina. "Is he doing that for _fun_?"
Before any further comment could be made, the boy on the plank shot out
over the edge of the roof and dived, with a mighty splash, into the deep
water of the pool, adjoining which Canoe Lodge was built.
"He'll be drowned!" cried Grace, wringing her plump hands.
"It'll serve him right if he is!" exclaimed Bessie. "What business had
he on our roof, I want to know?"
"Poor Tubby!" cried Wyn, choked with laughter.
"Isn't he the most ridiculous creature that ever was?" rejoined Frank.
"See there! he's come up to blow like a frog."
"It's a whale that comes up to blow," Wyn reminded her.
"Well! isn't Tubby Blaisdell a regular whale of a boy?" returned the
black-eyed girl.
"There's Dave!" cried Mina.
"I knew the two wouldn't be far apart!" sniffed Bess Lavine.
"He's got a boat and is going to Tubby's rescue," cried Grace.
"But see Tubby flounder around!" Frankie observed. "Why! that boy
couldn't sink if you filled his pockets with flatirons!"
"There! he _is_ going under," ejaculated the more timorous Mina.
"Dave will get him, all right," declared Wyn, with confidence.
She and Dave Shepard had been good chums since they were both in
rompers. Her girl friends might tease Wyn sometimes about Dave; but the
girl had no brothers and Dave made up the loss to her in every way.
"Oh! he's going to spear him with that boathook!" gasped Mina again.
And really, it looked so. Tubby Blaisdell was splashing about in the
pool before the canoe landing like a young grampus. Tubby was always
getting into more or less serious predicaments, and he always "lost his
head" and usually had to be aided by his friends.
In this case Dave Shepard prepared to literally spear him in the water.
Dave--who was a tall, athletic boy, with a frank, pleasant face, if
freckled, and close-cut brown curls in profusion--had driven the
flat-bottomed skiff he had obtained from a neighboring landing, across
the pool, and now, standing erect in the boat, with a single lunge
impaled upon the boathook the tail of Tubby's coat.
His chum was going down, as Dave thrust the boathook; for the
unfortunate victim of the accident had swallowed a quantity of water
when he dived with the plank from the eaves of the roof of Canoe Lodge.
There was no time to lose if Dave wished to rescue Tubby before serious
injury resulted to the unfortunate fat youth.
It was something of a feat to bring Tubby Blaisdell alongside the skiff
and haul him inboard without overturning the boat. But Dave accomplished
it to the admiration of the girls--even to Bessie's satisfaction.
"Well, I'm glad he got Tubby out," said that damsel, nodding her head.
"Glad to know that you are so humane, Bess," laughed Frank.
The girls trooped out to learn at closer range if the Blaisdell youth
was really injured or only exhausted.
He lay panting like a big fish in the bottom of the skiff. It was
altogether too cold an evening for him to be exposed in his wet
clothing. When the skiff's nose bumped into the shore, Dave Shepard
leaped out with alacrity and secured the painter to a post.
"Get up out of there, Tubby!" he commanded. "You'll get your death of
dampness. Come on!"
"Oh--oh--oh! I can't," chattered the fat youth. "I--I'm fr-roze to the
ve-ry mar-row of m-m-my bones!"
"The chill has struck in awful deep, then, Tubby," cried Frank Cameron,
from the river bank.
"Come on out of that!" commanded Dave. "I'm going to run you home so
that you will not get cold."
"Me?" chattered Blaisdell, rising like a turtle out of its shell. "Run
me home? Wh-wh-why, I c-c-couldn't do it. You know I couldn't r-r-run
that far, Dave."
"He must go right in by our fire and get warm," declared Wyn, quickly.
"Get your things, girls, and we'll all go home and leave Dave and Tubby
to enjoy that nice fire Grace built."
"That wet boy all over our nice rug!" exclaimed Bessie. "I object."
"Don't be hateful, Bess," admonished Grace.
"But what was he doing on our roof?" demanded the girl who claimed that
she did not like boys.
At this Dave burst into a great laugh and was scarcely able to drag
Tubby ashore.
"It's a wonder he didn't come right through on our heads," complained
Frank. "He's so heavy."
"But he _would_ do it," declared Dave, still laughing as he helped
his fat friend up the bank to the door of Canoe Lodge. "It would have
been a real good trick, too, if Tubby hadn't slipped."
"Always up to mischief!" sniffed Bessie Lavine. "That's why I dislike
boys so."
"I don't see what he could do on our roof," said Wyn, wonderingly.
"And he had no business there!" cried Grace.
"Why," explained Dave, for Tubby could not defend himself. "We saw Grace
making the fire, and we knew the wood was green. It made a big smudge
coming out of the chimney, and Tubby thought he had a brilliant idea."
"I know!" exclaimed Frankie. "He had that plank to put over the top of
our chimney. We'd have been smoked out, sure enough."
"That's it," chuckled Dave. "Tubby got up all right, and he got the
plank up all right. But just as he tried to lift the plank to the top of
the chimney his foot slipped, the board dropped, he fell on it as if he
was coasting down hill, and--you saw the rest!"
"Oh--oh!" chattered Tubby. "Come on in and let me get--get to--to
th-that f-f-fire. I'm _frozen_!"
"Here's the key, Dave," said Wyn, laughing (for the fat youth _did_
look so funny), "and you can lock up when you go home and bring the key
to my house. Don't you boys make a mess in here for us to clean up," she
added.
"But they will. Boys always do," declared Bessie Lavine.
"Well, thank goodness, it won't be _my_ turn to clean up after
them, or make another fire," declared Grace.
"They will do no damage," returned Wyn, with assurance, as the girls
trooped away from the boathouse toward the town.
"They have to keep their camp clean," declared Frank. "I know that.
Professor Skillings may be forgetful; but he is very particular about
_that_. Ferdinand Roberts told me so."
"I expect those horrid Busters _do_ know a lot more than we do
about camping."
"Indeed they do," sighed Grace. "How'll we ever put up a tent big enough
to house seven?"
"The boys will help us," declared Wyn.
"I expect we'll have to let them," grumbled Bess. "Or else pay a man to
do it for us."
"My goodness me!" laughed Frances Cameron. "It must be a dreadful thing
to hate boys like Bess does! They're awfully bad sometimes, I know----"
"Look at what those two boys tried to do to us this very evening,"
exclaimed Bessie.
"Oh, Tubby's always up to some foolishness," said Percy, laughing.
"And that Dave Shepard is just as bad!" cried Bess Lavine, tossing her
head.
"Wyn won't agree with that statement," chuckled Frank.
"And all six of the Busters are full of mischief," went on the
complaining one. "I wish they were not going to the same place we are to
camp."
"Why, Bess!" exclaimed Mina.
"I _do_ wish that. They'll be around under foot all the time. And
they'll play tricks, and be rough and rude, and I know they will spoil
the summer for us."
"You go on!" came from Frank, with some scorn. "I guess I can hold up my
end against the Busters."
"Just wait and see," prophesied Bessie, shaking her head. "I feel very
sure that, the Busters and the Go-Ahead Club will not get along well
together at Lake Honotonka."
"It takes two parties for an argument," said Wyn Mallory, quietly. "And
in spite of their mischief I believe in the Busters."
"Wait and see if what I say isn't true!" snapped Bessie, and turned off
into a side street toward her own home.