“Let’s go,” advised Frank. “They’re in a bad humor. It wasn’t our fault. I think we were lucky to escape so easily. If our boat had been smashed they would have just laughed at us.”
The lads scrambled back into their ice-boat and in a few minutes they were sailing up the bay again, past the wreckage of the other craft. Ike Nash and Tad Carson were clumsily trying to put it to rights.
“That’ll teach ’em to go around scaring people,” observed Chet Morton virtuously, as they flashed by. He waved ironically at the marooned sportsmen, and was rewarded only by a shake of the fist from Ike Nash.
In a short time, the lads were back at Bayport, and, having placed the ice-boat in its berth, they walked up the snow-covered street toward the Hardy home. This was a fine brick residence on High Street, with a garage where the boys kept their motorcycles and the decrepit auto they had bought with their savings and which had been of so much value in solving the Shore Road mystery of the stolen automobiles, as recounted in the volume of that title. At the rear was a barn, which had been fitted up as a gymnasium, where the Hardy boys and their chums spent many happy hours on rainy and stormy Saturdays.
When the Hardy boys said good-bye to Chet Morton and entered the house they were greeted by Aunt Gertrude, a peppery, dictatorial lady of certain temper and uncertain years, who was again with the Hardys for a visit of indeterminate length. Aunt Gertrude could never reconcile herself to the idea that the boys were growing up and persisted in treating them as though they were still infants, or, as Joe expressed it, “as if we were half-witted.”
“Go back and stamp the snow off your shoes!” she ordered, as they tramped into the hall. “It’s a disgrace, the way you two boys track up this house just as soon as I’ve got everything all cleaned up.”
There was very little snow on the boys’ boots, and Aunt Gertrude never, under any circumstances, assisted in the house cleaning, but it was her nature to give orders. The boys knew better than to disobey, so they meekly returned to the vestibule and stamped their shoes, then came back into the hall.
“That’s better,” said their aunt grudgingly. “Now go into the library. Your father is waiting for you. You should have been home hours ago. I declare I don’t know where you spend your time. Just gallivanting around when you should be at home doing your studies.”
The boys went on into the library. The door was open and when they entered they found their father, Fenton Hardy, the noted detective, perusing an imposing grist of legal documents at his desk. He glanced up and smiled at them.
“Hello, sons! Been out on the bay?”