“Why?” asked Bert.
“ ’Cause I was after you, and I didn’t know my piece very well. There’s one verse I never can remember, and I know I’d have broken down up on the platform. So I’m glad I didn’t have to speak.”
“So’m I,” murmured Bert. “Say, what is that thing, anyhow?” he asked, as Joe Norton pulled into view the “joke” Sam Todd had prepared with such care.
“Looks like a scalped Indian,” remarked Danny Rugg.
“That’s what Sam made it for,” chuckled Joe. “He was going to pull it in when you said that line, Bert, about what a fearful thing you saw.”
“Ha! Ha!” laughed Bert. “He was going to pull it in, was he? Well, he pulled himself out instead! It was a good joke all right!”
And so it was, only it turned just the other way from what Sam intended. But very often jokes do turn that way.
However, nothing much now mattered except that school was out for the long vacation.
“Where are you going for your vacation?” asked May Miller of Nan Bobbsey, as she walked home with Flossie and Freddie. Bert had gone on ahead with some of the boys.
“We don’t exactly know,” Nan replied. “Since we have Baby May with us, mother and daddy haven’t made up their minds. I guess we’ll go away somewhere.”