"There goes the luncheon bell!" cried Dick reproachfully. "We're keeping you girls away from your meal. Come on, fellows. Into the canoe with you."
"But you'll be back here to-morrow morning?" pressed Miss Bentley.
"Yes; at what time?"
"Ten o'clock."
"You'll find us here punctually."
Dick & Co. paddled back to their camp feeling that they were having a most jolly time, with all the real fun yet to come.
Dick did not think it worth while to go over to the hotel again that day, to see if a telegram had come. He was certain that the letter would not find Mr. Howgate earlier than the next day, in any event.
But at ten o'clock the next morning Dick & Co., having put the best possible aspect on their attire, paddled gently in alongside the float of the Hotel Pleasant.
Even before they had landed, Fred Ripley, who was stopping with his father and mother at the Lakeview House, alighted from an automobile runabout in the woods some two hundred yards from the lakeside camp of Dick & Co.
"Those muckers are away," Fred told himself, as he watched the war canoe go in at the hotel float. "Now, if I have half as much ingenuity as I sometimes think I have, I believe I can cut short their stay here by rendering that cheap crowd homeless—-and foodless!"