IN PRACTICE AGAIN
All the time the twins had been forbidden to row in the new shell the crew had been getting on very badly. Professor Dimp was hopeless, and Mrs. Case could not find two girls to take the twins' places who worked well with the other members of the crew.
Dora and Dorothy could only walk on the bank of the lake and watch the crew struggle to make the time that was its former record. Hester Grimes and her particular friends scoffed at the practice. Hester and Lily paddled almost daily in their canoe, and they seemed pretty sure of being chosen to represent the girls of Central High in the canoe race instead of the Lockwood twins.
Aunt Dora wished to know why Dora and Dorothy were not giving so much "precious time," as she expressed it, to athletics as formerly, and the twins had to tell her.
"Humph!" was the old lady's comment; but perhaps she did not feel all the satisfaction that exclamation implied when she saw how down-hearted the girls seemed when she walked with them again along the gravel walk that skirted the waterfront of Colonel Swayne's estate.
The girls' eight-oared shell was out and the crew were practicing. One of the new girls caught an awful crab and the shell came near being swamped.
"Mercy me!" ejaculated Aunt Dora. "Is that the best they can do without you girls to help them?"
This rather amused the twins, despite their sore-heartedness; but their aunt really began to "take up cudgels" for them. She objected to the punishment Gee Gee had meted out to her nieces.
"I didn't like the looks of that four-eyed teacher, anyway," declared the old lady, with some asperity. "I'm going to see about it. Your father would just let you be driven from pillar to post—he's got no spunk. What you Lockwoods need in this town is a woman in the family!"
Dora and Dorothy thought this was only a threat. But Aunt Dora actually appeared at Central High the next morning and obtained an audience with Mr. Sharp, the principal.
Whatever she said to him bore fruit in a quiet investigation on the principal's part into the pros and cons of the canoe bumping that had brought the Lockwood twins to grief. He heard the testimony of eye witnesses of the collision—something that Miss Carrington had not done.
All that he said to the severe teacher will never be known; but Bobby heard him say for one thing:
"Loyalty—even in school athletics—is a very good thing, Miss Carrington. You will admit that, yourself. And these girls are loyal students. I think they have been punished enough, don't you? Besides, I fear the testimony you chanced to hear was prejudiced. This Hester Grimes has been in trouble before for giving untruthful testimony against a fellow-classmate. Am I not right?"
"And very honorably she admitted her fault afterward," Miss Carrington declared.
"True. But let us not punish these two girls any longer; for Miss Grimes may have a change of heart again—when it is too late."
It was with rather ill grace that Gee Gee ever owned up that she was wrong, even on minor points. She therefore simply called the twins to her desk after school, and said:
"It has been represented to me that you are needed in these rowing contests for the good of the school. Personally I believe that athletics is occupying the minds of all you girls too much. But as your conduct during the past fortnight has been very good, I will remove the obstacle to your rowing with your schoolmates again. That is all."
There was what Bobby called "a regular love feast" at the boathouse that afternoon. It was not practice day; but when Professor Dimp heard of the return of the Lockwood twins to the crew he was delighted.
Public interest in Billy Long and his possible connection with the robbery of the department store had rather died out by this time. The friends of Short and Long had rallied around him, and he was not arrested. When his ankle was better he hobbled to school on crutches; but the boys missed him greatly on the ball field.
Billy told his chums that he was sure the two men he saw had hidden money somewhere about the caverns of the island; and not only were the boys of Central High interested in this "buried treasure," but their sisters as well.
"I tell you what," said Bobby Hargrew, on the Beldings' porch one evening when Laura had been having one of her "parties"; "let's organize and incorporate 'The Central High Treasure Hunting Company, Limited,' and go over to Cavern Island and just dig it up by the roots till we find Billy's treasure in a lard kettle."
"Sounds terribly romantic," said Jess Morse.
"We had a scrumptious time over there at the other picnic," said Dorothy.
"I vote for another Saturday at the caverns, anyway," said Chet.
"Me, too," added Lance Darby.
"Well, you folks can guy me all you want to," said Short and Long, who was getting about with a cane now instead of his crutches. "But those fellers talked of money, and of burying it in a lard can."
"Say!" exclaimed Lance, "a lard can will hold a lot of money."
"All right. You laugh. I'm going to have another look for it when I get over there," said Billy.
"And I'm with you, Billy," said Josephine Morse, with a sigh. "Goodness me! I need to find a buried treasure, or something of the kind."
Jess's mother was a widow and in straitened circumstances, and sometimes Jess was cramped for clothing as well as spending money. She lived at the "poverty-stricken" end of Whiffle Street, just as the Beldings lived at the "wealthy" end.
So the party for the next Saturday was made up in this impromptu fashion, without one of the members realizing what an important occasion that outing would prove.
It looked to Dora and Dorothy, when they reached home that evening, as though they might have to "cut" the "treasure hunt," however. Aunt Dora had gone to bed quite ill, and before morning Mr. Lockwood telephoned for the doctor. He came and the family was up most of that night. Aunt Dora had caught cold and it had settled into a severe muscular rheumatic attack.
The poor lady suffered a great deal during the next few days, having considerable fever, and being quite out of her head at times. She called for "Dora" then, almost incessantly, and no matter which twin responded she declared it wasn't her namesake, but Dorothy, and that they "were trying to fool her!"
"And, oh, dear, me," said Dorothy, "I wish we hadn't done it, Dora."
"I wish so, too. When I tell her that I'm Dora she doesn't believe me."
"Poor Auntie!" sighed Dorothy. "I expect she has had her heart set on taking you home with her."
"Yes, it's preyed on her mind."
"I tell you what!" ejaculated Dorothy.
"What now?"
"Let me take your place. I'll go home with her—for a while, at least."
"No you won't! I'm Dora. I'll go with her," said the other twin, decisively. "And just think how she went to Mr. Sharp and got us off from Gee Gee's decision."
"But you mustn't go with her to stay all the time, Dora. That would kill me!" cried Dorothy.
"No. But I'll go a little while this summer. We'll have to do something for her. I expect she's lonely in her big house with nobody but servants."
Thus the twins tried to quiet their consciences—they really had two of those unfortunate arrangements. And the consciences would not be quieted easily. The girls ran home from school the next afternoon before they went to the boathouse; and were prepared to cut practice had Aunt Dora needed them.
But fortunately the patient was asleep, and the twins hurried down to take their places in the shell. The Big Day was now approaching. There were not many more afternoons on which the girls might practice for the races.
"We mustn't disappoint the other girls, and the whole school, and give up the eight-oared shell practice," Dora said to Dorothy.
"No; but if Aunt Dora is going to be ill long we will have to give up our canoe work. Let Hester Grimes and Lil Pendleton beat us in that, if they will. Aunt Dora needs us—and we owe her some gratitude, if nothing more," agreed her twin.