“Oh, don’t ask me,” said the latter. “Miss McCarthy got out of her car about five miles back, walked to the fence then back to the car. She said her friends had passed there about four o’clock in the afternoon and were in camp then.”
“Well, what do you know about that?” wondered the captain. “Tell us how you did it?”
“A little bird told me,” chuckled Jane. The girls burst into a merry peal of laughter.
“Never mind. We won’t be as mean as you are,” declared Sam, springing up. “We will return good for evil.”
“Did you see the three bulls?” interrupted Jane. “I knew you would cross that orchard and I was afraid you’d meet them.”
“What’s that?” The captain was interested instantly. “You say you met the bulls?”
“Yes. I might as well tell you,” explained Miss Elting. “You think we weren’t able to keep the pace we set for ourselves. I don’t want my girls to rest under that imputation, for I believe that they can completely outdistance you boys. We did meet the three bulls. Yes, they treed us. We were all up in apple trees when you boys passed singing ‘Forty-nine Blue Bottles.’”
Some one laughed. The captain frowned at the boy who had done so.
“You let us pass, and never called us to come to your assistance?” he demanded.
“We preferred to get out of our scrape without appealing to our rivals, Captain Baker.”
“Whew! That was a fix. How’d you manage it?”
“Through the resourcefulness and courage of Harriet Burrell. Had it not been for her we undoubtedly should still be up in the trees in the apple orchard.”
“Please don’t,” begged Harriet blushingly.
“Now that you have aroused our curiosity, it would be cruel not to tell us the whole story,” declared George.
“Yeth. Cruelty to animalth,” nodded Tommy.
Miss Elting, despite Harriet’s protestations, did tell the boys the story, giving the full credit for their rescue to Harriet Burrell, to whom it belonged. The boys listened in open-mouthed wonder.
“Fellows, we aren’t so much as we think we are,” declared the chief of the Tramp Club. “I propose three cheers for Miss Burrell. Now! Altogether! One, two, three!”
They gave three rousing cheers in which, Tommy’s shrill voice joined.
“Who’s all right?” demanded the captain at the end of the cheer.
“Miss Burrell’s all right!” yelled the Tramps. “For she’s a jolly good fel—low; For she’s a jolly good fellow,” sang the Tramps, as with hands on each other’s shoulders they marched through the camp, and out into the field on their way to their own camp, a short distance from that of the Meadow-Brook Girls.