“Don’t you want the other boys to know?” asked Bess, a tone of disappointment in her voice.
“Do you?” asked Cora, mischievously.
“Oh, I suppose they will find it out. And besides, Cora, honestly, don’t you think we would be—lonely without—the boys?”
Cora burst into a merry laugh. “There, Bess, my dear, you have broken the watchword—you are to be responsible for the boys. We pledged ourselves, as we always do, to ‘keep them out’ this time.”
When Jack heard the news he hugged Cora in the very presence of Bess. The sister knew what he meant (it was getting away from the detectives), although Bess was somewhat embarrassed at the extravagant show of affection. Then Jack did what a boy does “when in doubt,” he started a series of somersaults and sofa pillow turns, until Cora declared he quite forgot that he was in the company of ladies.
With profuse apologies he assumed an unwonted show of dignity, and without another word went upstairs and called up first Ed and then Walter on the telephone, telling each all he knew, and all he could guess about the trip to Lookout Beach, and fairly begged the boys to go along!
“I am afraid the girls will have to spoil their trip if we don’t go,” he said to Ed, who had made a half excuse, “for they really couldn’t travel along that road without us!”
And this in the very face of the fact that the elders were going along, and that the girls had declared that no boys could go!
“Won’t there be high jinks!” Jack asked, and he told himself, with a jolly chuckle, as he hung up the receiver and went down to the girls, that if any “jinks” were lacking, it would not be his fault.
“Too bad we fellows can’t take you out a little way,” he said, innocently, as he came downstairs, “but the fact is, we have made plans—our plans are still secret!” and Jack ran down the walk like the big boy that he was in spite of his few years of good record at college.