“It doesn’t occur to any of you to ask what the joke is, does it?” asked Henry Burns, dryly.
“Don’t want to know,” replied George.
“Nor I, either,” said Arthur.
“Keep it to play on Witham,” said Joe.
“Then I’ll enlighten you without your asking,” continued Henry Burns, nothing abashed. “You did not notice, perhaps, that though your friends, Tom and Bob, did not come ashore to-day, their baggage did, and it is back there on the wharf. Now I propose that we get John Briggs to let us take his wheelbarrow, wheel their traps over to the point, pitch their tent for them, and have everything ready by the time they get here. It’s rather a mean thing to do, I know, and not the kind of a trick I’d play on old Witham; but there’s nothing particular on hand in that line for to-day.”
Henry Burns paused, with a sly twinkle in his eyes, to note the effect of his words.
“Capital!” roared George Warren, slapping Henry Burns again on the back, regardless of the delicate state of that young gentleman’s health. “We might have known better than to take Henry Burns seriously.”
“Same old Henry Burns,” said Arthur. “Take notice, boys, that he never is beaten in anything he sets his heart on, and that his delicate health will never, never be any better;” and he was about to imitate his elder brother’s example in the matter of a punch at Henry Burns, but the latter, though of slighter build, grappled with him, and after a moment’s friendly wrestling laid him on his back on the greensward, thereby illustrating the force of his remark as to Henry Burns’s invincibility.
The suggestion was at once followed. Within an hour the boys had wheeled the baggage of the campers to a point of land overlooking the bay.
“It’s all here,” said Henry Burns, finally, as two of the boys deposited a big canvas bag, containing the tent, upon the grass, “except that one box on the wharf, which looks as though it contained food.”