“Look who’s here!” he cried, in a nasty tone. “I wonder what they’re up to now, Carl?”
“We’re not hiding from the cops because we broke a plate glass window and were afraid to own up to it,” Bob told him.
“Who broke a window?” demanded Buck. “You can’t prove that it wasn’t a snowball that one of your own bunch threw that broke that window.”
“We don’t throw that kind of snowballs,” said Joe.
“What do you mean by that?” asked Buck.
“Are you trying to say that we put stones in our snowballs?”
“I don’t have to say it,” retorted Joe. “You just said it yourself.”
Too late Buck realized his mistake, and his coarse red face grew purple as Herb and Jimmy grinned at him in maddening fashion.
“Don’t you laugh at me, Jimmy Plummer!” he exclaimed, picking on Jimmy as being the least warlike of the radio boys. “I’ll make you laugh out of the other side of your mouth in a minute,” and he started to dash past Bob to reach his victim.
But to do so he had to pass between Bob and the bank of the lake, which just at this point was a foot or so above the water.