“Say that again,” demanded Joe. “Or, rather, don’t say it again. Let me think it’s all a horrible dream.”
“Sure as shooting,” affirmed Jimmy. “I was in Dave Slocum’s store when Mr. Looker came in to get some fishing tackle. He got to talking to Dave, and told him that he was going to take his family down to Ocean Point for the summer, and that Buck was going to take a couple of his friends along with him. He didn’t say who the friends were, but of course we know it wouldn’t be any one but Carl Lutz and Terry Mooney. In fact, those are the only fellows he hangs out with. None of the decent fellows in town will have anything to do with him. So what do you think of that?”
“Punk!” declared Joe.
“It’s a shame that we can’t get rid of that gang even in vacation time,” said Bob. “Half the fun of getting through with school was the thought that we wouldn’t have to look on Buck’s ugly face for a couple of months.”
“It’s lucky the air down at the Point is salt, or Buck would poison it,” remarked Herb disconsolately. “That fellow’s a regular hoodoo.”
“Oh, well,” Bob comforted himself, “we don’t have to mix up with him, anyway. He won’t be living in our little separate colony, and our folks and his never had anything to do with each other. It’ll probably be only once in a while when we have to come across him. And it’s more than likely that he’ll steer clear of us, for he knows he’s about as popular with us as a rattlesnake at a picnic party.”
“If he tries any of his low-down tricks there won’t be any Mr. Preston to save him again from a licking,” put in Joe. “But let’s forget him and think of something pleasant.”
The women of the party had gone that same day to the Point in order to get everything ready for the coming of the boys and their sisters on the morrow. The fathers were still in town, where business or profession detained them. Their plan for the summer was to go down to the Point for the week-ends only.
Dr. Atwood, Joe’s father, had taken his wife and the other women down to the resort in his spacious car early in the morning. It was only a pleasant spin of about forty miles, and after seeing them comfortably settled, he had returned in order to take the boys and girls down on the following day.
He found on his return, however, that a friend of Herb Fennington’s sisters, Agnes and Amy, had arranged to take the girls down early that evening. They had asked Rose Atwood to go down with them, so that left only the radio boys to take the trip down the next day in the doctor’s car.