The next time Billy and Tom and Winona and Louise went off in Billy’s canoe for the day, they did not take Sandy. She happened to be making one of her brief visits home. They took, instead, a shot-gun apiece (that is, the boys did), a book apiece (that was for the girls), a bagful of socks from the Scouts’ mending-basket, and the usual amount of lunch.
“We look like an Italian moving,” Tom observed critically, looking over their joint baggage. “Three fishing-rods, two baskets, two paddles, two guns, two sunbonnets. Whew! Louise, I’ll trade with you.”
“It isn’t much at all,” said Louise indignantly. “I could carry my share, and yours, too, if I had to.”
“You may,” he returned promptly. “Here’s my rifle. It won’t go off unless you hit the trigger by accident.”
“Heap big chief!” said she, not offering to take it. “If I’d remembered how you hated carrying innocent little things like this around with you”—she pointed to the imposing pile of baskets, books and work in the bottom of the canoe—“I’d have telephoned for an expressman.”
“Have you a telephone?” asked Tom. “When did you put it in, and what did you tie it to?”
“No,” said Louise, “but we could have borrowed yours.”
The Scouts had just finished installing a telephone from Wampoag to their headquarters. They had done nearly everything themselves in the way of connecting and so forth. They were very proud of it, and the Camp Fire girls were wildly envious, for all they had was a system of baking-powder-box-and-wire telephone, worked out from the American Girl’s Handy Book by two young geniuses. It was all right as far as it went, but naturally it wouldn’t connect them with the telephones at home, or at Wampoag.
“Why, of course you could,” consented Tom. “In fact, you can. Shall I paddle you that way?”
“You needn’t mind,” she smiled. “Do look at Winona!”