“Oh, don’t!” cried Bobby. “It makes my head buzz. And Laura is a regular lady detective. She’s always finding out things that ‘it would be better, far, did we not know!’”
She said this to Nellie Agnew, when they had separated from Laura and Jess, and were walking toward home.
“Say! do you know how Laura explained that canoe tipping over with Purt Sweet and Lily Pendleton?” pursued the lively one.
“I didn’t know that they had an accident,” laughed Nellie. “Those canoes are awfully ticklish, I know.”
“I should say they were! Well, Purt and Lil borrowed Hessie’s canoe and they no more than got started before they went head first into the water—and Lil, of course, helpless as usual, had to be ‘rescued.’ The number of times that girl has been ‘rescued’ this season is a caution!”
“I do admire your elegant language,” said Nellie, reprovingly. “But what did Laura say?”
“She explained it all for them. Both Purt and Lil were trying to tell how such a wonderful thing chanced to happen as an overturn, when Laura said she could explain it satisfactorily to all hands. She said that Purt had made a mistake and parted his hair too far on one side, and that had overbalanced the canoe!”
“Well, they do swamp awfully easy,” laughed Nellie. “I guess Laura has found the right explanation of how the villain left the gym. But there is one explanation that I would like to have—a much more important one,” concluded Nellie.
“What’s that?”
“Who did it?”