“I’m afraid I wouldn’t be able to get away. Go ahead with your outing—if your mother agrees.”
Mrs. Hardy, it appeared, had no objections, although at first she was reluctant in view of the fact that the boys would be absent from the family circle over Christmas Day. “It won’t seem like Christmas without my lads,” she said.
Aunt Gertrude, of course, insisted on contributing her “two cents’ worth,” as Joe expressed it.
“Camping in the winter time!” she sniffed. “I never heard the like of it. They’ll freeze to death.”
“We’ll be just as comfortable as if we were in town, Aunt Gertrude,” said Frank. “The cabin is well built and warm, and we’ll have plenty of heavy blankets with us.”
“You’ll need ’em. As for being comfortable, I’ll warrant you’ll be glad to come humping back home where everything is nice and cosy. You’ll find a big change, my fine young men, when you get away down in that rickety shack, with the wind blowing through the chinks and the snow drifting in on the floor. If you stay there longer than one night, it will be a big surprise to me.”
“Of course,” put in Joe, “if you think you will miss us so very much—if you really think it would spoil your Christmas not to have us here, why we won’t go.”
Aunt Gertrude laughed mirthlessly.
“Spoil my Christmas! The idea! It will be a real merry Christmas again, without two noisy boys making life a botheration to me.”
“In that case, then, we’ll go camping,” said Frank.