“Say, it’s been a long time,” he cried boyishly, taking both her hands in his, his brown, handsome face alight with eagerness. “Did you miss me, Betty?”
“Never mind us, Allen,” drawled Grace, with a wink at the assembled company. “Would it be doing you a favor to remove ourselves from the surrounding landscape?”
“Don’t bother,” laughed Allen, while the wild rose in Betty’s face turned a deeper pink. “We don’t mind you in the least, do we, Betty?”
“Not at all,” said Betty, demurely, and Mollie threw up her hands in despair.
“They’re just plain crazy, both of them,” she said. A moment later she turned to Frank, adding in a different tone: “What’s the matter with you and Will, anyway? You both look as mad as hops.”
“That’s nothing to the way we feel,” Frank assured her, and immediately he and Will poured forth a tale that made the girls stare in surprise and excitement.
It seemed that when Frank and Will had started back to Deepdale the morning after they had spent the night in camp with the girls, helping them get up their tent, they had not gone very far along the road when they had been stopped by a couple of rough-looking men. The latter had flourished pistols at them and commanded them to “Loosen up!”
“Oh! And did you?” queried Amy, horrified.
Will shrugged.
“What else could we do?” he said. “We were unarmed.”