“That’ll be all right,” answered Ranny Blake, quite out of order.
“Nobody’s around here,” chimed in Neddie Mack, sending a searching eye up and down the beach.
“We’ll just cover things up and forget them,” suggested Mr. Doane. “When we come back we’ll be hungry enough to eat the screw driver.”
This brought forth a shout from the boys, but the girls were already starting up the hill in that precise, deliberate way girls have of doing things when boys are in the party.
But there was nothing self conscious about the followers of Mr. Doane. The boys looked up to him as if he were a veritable miracle man; they repeated his words, they openly jostled each other for the coveted place nearest him, and Jerry, being really quite a talker, received a jab from Tom’s bare elbow, at regular intervals.
“When I was a boy I lived in the city,” Mr. Doane would say. Whereat his listeners would know of so many others who “lived in the city” that the proposed story would flutter away on the wings of a hearty laugh.
“But there’s nothing like the great outdoors to give fellows muscle—”
“I’m goin’ to take boxin’ lessons,” put in Jerry eagerly, but the jeers and groans from his companions offered very slight encouragement for such an undertaking.
“I’ve got the gloves,” he declared. “An’ can’t a feller put on weight boxin’, Mr. Doane?”
“Skin—nay!” retorted Ranny Blake.