"It's an outrage!" sputtered Hi Martin, white to the roots of his hair. He was walking about, stamping with his bare feet on the ground, the fingers of both his hands working nervously.
"Oh, well, you won't get any sympathy in this crowd," Tom assured Hi glumly. "You were party to this, and all that disturbs you is that any one should dare take the same kind of a liberty with you. We don't care what happens to you, now, Martin."
"What shall we do with Martin, anyway?" demanded Dan Dalzell.
"Nothing," returned Dick crisply. "He isn't worthy of having anything done to him."
"Let's call 'Ted' with all our might," proposed Harry.
"You can, if you want to," Dick rejoined. "I doubt if he is now near enough to hear you. Even if he did hear, he'd only snicker and run further away."
After a few moments more Dick and his chums, as though by common consent, squatted on the sand near the edge of the pond. It was warmer for them that way. Martin edged over close to them. Not one member of Dick & Co. did the captain of the North Grammar nine really like, but in his present woeful plight Hi wanted human company of some kind, and he could not very well go in search of people who wore all their clothing.
While the swimmers had been occupied in the water at the lower end of the pond, Ted Teall had been wonderfully busy.
First of all, Ted had loaded himself with about half the clothing belonging to Dick & Co. The shoes he had carried by tying each pair by means of the laces and swinging three pair around his neck. The first load be carried swiftly through the woods until be came to a thicket where he hoped he would find concealment.
Then he had gone back for the other half of the clothing. This, upon arrival at the thicket, Ted dropped in on top of the first installment.