“Yes,” again came the whining tones of the little fat, squint-eyed tramp, “and the first thing we know, Old Lady Luck will be spanking her sons, too.”
CHAPTER X
A CRASH IN THE NIGHT
Led by Frank Allen, the boys turned to the job of cleaning up the house, in reality a bungalow of the mountains.
On counting the opened cans of food they learned that Snadder and Blinky had not purloined very much of it, and taking an inventory of the remainder, they reckoned there was sufficient to carry them over a period of a month or more, even though the other boys, down in Columbia, who had promised to come up, should arrive.
Mrs. Parsons had spared no thought. She showed very clearly that she had kept in close touch with the things which Mr. Parsons, her late husband, had formerly brought to the camp for his own use.
The broken glass was gathered up carefully and thrown into a large metal receptacle outside the rear door into which they also threw all the empty cans.
“How about the window pane?” asked Lanky. “We ought to fix it, or we’ll have trouble keeping this place warm.”
“I saw a piece of glass in that pantry,” said Buster. “It looked to be about the same size.”
They obtained the sheet of glass, found it was unbroken, and the next problem appeared—how to get the new pane to stay in without putty.
However, they succeeded in getting the new pane in the sash quite securely, using the triangular shaped tacks which held the old one, and, using no putty whatever, relying on the smooth scraping of the woodwork behind the glass and the tightness of the tacks to keep out most of the cold air.