"No, ma'am! No girls need apply. A real fishing trip is a serious matter and we can't be bothered with girls. When we come home to-morrow night, if Mother says you've been good children all day, you can have some of our fish."
CHAPTER XIII
THAT LUNCHEON
To Dolly's surprise she discovered that Bob and Bert were in earnest regarding their preference for expeditions that did not include girls. Nearly every day the two boys went off fishing or motor boating with a lot of their cronies, but the girls were seldom asked.
"They're always like that," said Dotty, carelessly. "They like to ramble through the woods or cruise around the lake by themselves. They wear old flannel shirts and disreputable hats, and they eat their lunch any old way, without any frills or fuss. I don't like that sort of picnicking myself, I like pretty table fixings even if they're only paper napkins and pasteboard dishes. But the boys like tin pails and old frying pans and they catch their fish and cook 'em and eat 'em like a horde of savages."
"All right," agreed Dolly, "we can have fun enough without them; but I think they might take us along sometimes. Let's get up a rival picnic some day, and see if they won't come to it."
"They won't," said Dotty, "but we can try it, if you like. And anyway we can have our own fun."
So one day when all the boys of the neighbouring camps were going on a fishing trip, the girls arranged a picnic of their own.
The two Holmes girls, Maisie Norris, Dolly and Dotty, and three or four others, were in the crowd and they were to go in two motor boats to Bramble Brook, the very spot where the boys were trout fishing that day.