"They got your goat, old man," said Dave, chuckling, "that's sure. But you blame them for a crime they did not commit, I believe. Remember how many times you have tried to trick _them_?"

"Huh!" snorted the fat youth. "Did I ever succeed?"

"I hope," said Mrs. Havel, breaking in upon this "give and take"

conversation, "that your parents will not blame me if you all appear--both girls and boys--to have lost your good manners here in the woods. Do simmer down. Remember, you return to civilization to-day."

"Oh, dear! don't remind us--don't, dear Mrs. Havel," cried Frank.

"Just think!" scoffed Ferd. "You girls will have to be all 'dolled up'

on Sunday again. Won't you _hate_ it?"

"Rather go around in a tramping skirt and without a hat," admitted Wyn, frankly.

"The tastes of girlhood are much different now from what they were in _my_ day," said the lady, with a sigh. "When I was young we never thought of doing the things you girls do now."

"Isn't that why you didn't do them?" asked Frank, slily. "Perhaps we girls of this generation have better-developed imaginations."

"Oh, sure!" cried Ferd, with sarcasm. "You girls are wonders--just as smart as little Hen Rogers was last term when Miss Haley asked him if he could name any town in Alaska."

"What did he say?" asked Frank, with interest.

"He said, 'Nome'--and she sent him to the foot of the cla.s.s," chuckled Ferd.

"Oh! aren't you smart?" railed Bessie. "That joke is the twin to the one about the boy who was asked by the professor in physics if he knew what 'nasal organ' meant. And the boy said 'No, sir' and got a 'perfect'

mark."

"Come on, folks!" cried Wyn. "Stop telling silly jokes and bear a hand here. All these things have to go into the boat."

Mr. Jarley and Polly joined them just then, Mr. Jarley to collect the canoes and take them to the Forge, while Polly was to go with the two clubs aboard the newly-named _Go-Ahead_ to Denton.

Polly, in a brand-new boating costume, was so pretty that the boys couldn't keep their eyes away from her. She was happy, too, and this fact gave an entirely different expression to her face.

She was to go home with Wyn, and in a few weeks her father would follow and establish a home for them both in Denton. He was going, as Mr.

Lavine declared, to start in his old home town just where he had left off more than ten years before. And Polly was to enter the academy with the girls of Green Knoll Camp on the opening day.

The party got under weigh on the _Go-Ahead_ and were some miles down the lake ere it was discovered that Professor Skillings had forgotten both his shoes and his hat, for he had paddled over to the girls' camp barefoot as usual. It was too late to go back then, for the baggage had all been put aboard the bateau.

So the professor went home with a handkerchief tied around his head and a pair of moccasins on his feet--the latter borrowed from Dr. Shelton, at whose dock they stopped for luncheon.

The bluff doctor insisted that the whole party come ash.o.r.e and lunch with him. He had arranged for Polly's tuition at the Denton Academy, had bought her text-books, and when the party left for home that day he thrust into Polly Jolly's hand a silver chain purse with more money in it than the boatman's daughter had ever possessed before.

Polly Jolly was beginning to live up to the loving name that Wyn Mallory had given to her. She was the very gayest of the gay as the _Go-Ahead_ proceeded down the lake and then down the Wintinooski to Denton.

The last of the journey was taken after they had had a picnic supper, and under the brilliant light of the September moon. The boys and girls sang and told stories, and otherwise enjoyed themselves. But as they drew near home they quieted down.

The summer was behind them. For more than two months they had skylarked, and enjoyed themselves to the full on the lake and in the woods. They "were going back to civilization," as Frankie said, and it made them a bit thoughtful.

"I expect," said Mina Everett, "that we have had just the best time that we will ever have in all our lives."

"Why so?" demanded Bess. "Can't we go camping again?"

"Sure we will!" declared Dave Shepard.

"I see what Mina means--and I guess she is right," Wyn remarked, earnestly. "We may go camping again; but it will never be just like this first time. For the girls, I mean. We had never done such a thing before. And then--if we go next summer--we'll be a whole year older. And a year is a long, long time."

"Long enough to spoil some of you girls, I expect," grumbled Ferdinand.

"Spoil us, Mister? How's that?" snapped Bess, at once taking up the gauntlet.

"You'll be wanting to put up your hair and let down your skirts, and will be wearing all the new-style folderols by next summer," retorted Ferd.

"Oh, won't they, just!" groaned Tubby, in agreement.

"You wait and see, Smartie!" cried Frank Cameron.

"We are not like the girls you are thinking of," declared Grace, with some warmth.

"No, indeed," agreed Percy.

"The Go-Aheads are going to fool you, Ferdie," said Wyn, laughing. "Just you watch us. _All_ girls aren't in a hurry to grow up and ape their mothers and older sisters. We're going in for athletics and the 'simple life' strongly; aren't we, girls?"

Her fellow club members agreed in a hearty chorus. "Besides," added Bess, "we can have all the fun the other kind of girls have as well as our own kind. We can dance, and go to parties, and wear pretty frocks for _part_ of the time."

"What did I tell you?" demanded Ferd, grinning.

"Never mind, Ferd, never mind," said Dave, softly. "We'll be a bit that way ourselves before the winter's over. You know, Ferd, that your folks will insist on your keeping your hair cut and your finger-nails manicured."

"And of course I'll have a blister on my heel from wearing dancing pumps before the season is over," groaned Tubby. "Oh, well! it's not altogether our fault that we grow up so fast. Our folks make us," and he groaned again, for dancing school was one of the fat youth's pet aversions.

"That is what youth is for," advised Mrs. Havel, who overheard all this.

"It is a preparation for manhood and womanhood."

"Dear me! Dear me! let's forget it," cried Dave. "This is no time for feeling solemn. Thank goodness, for two solid months we have forgotten all about the 'duty we owe to posterity,' as the professor expresses it.

Maybe next year we can forget it again in our camps upon the sh.o.r.es of Lake Honotonka."

"Well expressed, little boy--well expressed," agreed Wynifred, tweaking one of Dave's curls that would _not_ lie down, no matter what he did to them. "My! but we _have_ grown serious. This is no way to end our camping days, girls. Come! another lively song----"

The motor boat drifted in to the boathouse landing to the lilt of a familiar rowing song. Wyn's camping days were over; the outing of the Go-Ahead Club was at an end.

THE END

SOMETHING ABOUT

AMY BELL MARLOWE

AND HER BOOKS FOR GIRLS