“We came over to see if we could help you,” continued Dave. “Here’s my cousin, Frank Dumont, girls. Some of you know him, anyway. This is his motor boat, and if there really is nothing we can do to help you here, why, Frank wants to take you all–with Mrs. Havel, if she is agreeable–for a trip around the lake. We’ve got supplies aboard and we’ll stop somewhere and make a picnic dinner.”
“Goody!” cried Mina. “Then we will not have to make dinner here, Bess.”
“Agreed!” announced Grace. “There will be no more dishes to wash until evening, then.”
“Well, I don’t know,” Dave said, slowly. “Of course we like to have you girls go along; but usually girls do the grub-getting and dishwashing on a picnic.”
“Nothing doing, then,” declared Frank, laughing at him. “This crowd of girls are going as invited guests, or not at all. We promise to be ornamental, but not useful.”
“You’re ornamental, all right, in those blouses and bloomers,” declared Ferd, for the girls had discarded skirts about the camp, and felt much more free and comfortable than they usually did.
“If worse comes to worst,” said Mrs. Havel, smiling, “I will be the camp drudge, boys, for I want to see the lake shore in panorama.”
“Oh, let ’em come,” drawled Tubby, still lying on his back on the little deck of the Happy Day. “They’ll get hungry some time and have to cook for us.”
And so, amid much bustle, and laughter, and raillery, the girls of Green Knoll Camp joined the boys of Cave-in-the-Wood Camp in the motor boat for a trip around the big lake.