"Biggest smoke we can make," said Harm Strauss.
"We must wrap our heads up," said Bill Ogden, "but it'll be the biggest kind of a Saturday."
Van had some matches in his pocket, and the heap of sticks and straw and chips the boys gathered for him was a foot high by the time he got the third match well a-going.
The hornet's nest was a big one, and there was a wonderfully numerous tribe of winged settlers in it. They had picked out a fine airy place to hang their house—just under the eaves of the open shed, back of Captain Hollowboy's one-story kitchen, at the corner.
The right place for the fire was at the foot of the upright corner post, but Harman Strauss told Van, "If we stick it there, Van, we'll set the house afire."
"That'd never do," said Bill Seaver. "It's jam-full of all sorts of chemicals and things. There'd be an awful blow-up if that house got afire."
"Might spoil the village."
"Oh, but wouldn't it blow those hornets good and high!"
Just at that moment Steve Whitney and Andy Yokum came over the fence. They did not even wait to put their handkerchiefs around their necks and faces before they began to gather great bunches of weeds.
It was time every boy of them had some kind of a brush in his hand, for the angry insects had smelled the smoke, and were coming out to see about it.