“Awa’ wi’ ye!” he bellowed. “Awa’ frae ma flowers, ye young limb! I’ll hae ye reported!”
MacBane always lapsed into broad Scotch when his temper was aroused. The rest of the boys scattered, fearing the wrath to come. Jerry managed to scramble out of the flowerbed just as the janitor reached him. He jumped out of reach of the outstretched hand, with the result that MacBane lost his balance and overstepped the border, treading on some choice blossoms and getting tangled up in the wire.
Jerry made for the fountain and was already taking deep gulps of the cool water when MacBane, now spluttering unintelligible phrases that could only have been understood in the remotest reaches of Caledonia, got out of the flowerbed and thundered toward him. With a longing glance at the spouting water, for his raging thirst was not yet appeased, and with a fearful glance at the approaching janitor, Jerry turned and fled.
He joined his laughing companions at the street corner, and with a shamefaced air admitted that the joke had been on him. MacBane gave up the chase, vowing threats of vengeance on the following Monday.
“He’ll forget all about it by then,” assured Phil.
“I won’t forget about it,” declared Jerry. “Next time anybody offers me an apple I’ll ask for an orange instead. You can’t very well fill that with pepper. I’ll get even with you, Chet.”
“You’re welcome to try,” replied the practical joker cheerfully. “But in the meantime let’s plan this trip for tomorrow.”
As a result of their arrangements, the Hardy boys and their chums met in the barn back of the Hardy home early the next morning, all outfitted for a hike into the country. Each lad carried a substantial lunch, their mothers realizing that the noonday meal by the roadside is one of the chief features of such an outing. Phil and Tony were late, and the other boys put in the time by exercising in the Hardy boys’ well equipped gymnasium, to which purpose the barn had been converted. Biff Hooper practised left hooks and uppercuts with desperate intensity and battered the punching bag until it hummed; Chet almost broke his neck attempting some complicated maneuvers on the parallel bars that were meant as an imitation of a circus bareback rider; Jerry contemplated his lunch and wondered if it were too soon after breakfast for a piece of pie.
Phil Cohen and Tony Prito arrived together and the boys started off at last, trudging along the broad highway in the early morning sunlight, whistling away in the best of spirits. They were decorous enough while they were in the city limits, but once they struck the dusty country roads their natural activity asserted itself and they wrestled and tripped one another, ran impromptu races, picked berries by the roadside and laughed and shouted without a care in the world.
The road skirted the Willow River, which ran among the farms and hills back of Bayport, through a pleasant, pastoral country. Toward the middle of the morning the boys left the road and struck out beneath the trees toward a secluded spot on the river, where they enjoyed a swim. For over an hour they splashed about in the cool water. Chet was the first to come ashore, and the others would have remained much longer had it not been for the discovery that their thoughtful companion, after getting dressed, was busying himself in the time-honored pastime of tying their clothes into knots.
Whereupon they scrambled out of the water and chased the chubby one into the shelter of some bushes, whence they were unable to pursue him further because the thorns hurt their bare feet and they were forced to retreat, hopping, toward the river bank while Chet jeered at them from the covert.
“Chaw on the beef!” he cried, in the time-honored way.
“Just you wait!” spluttered Joe, chewing on a knot with all his might.
“Am waiting,” was the cheerful retort of the joker.
“We’ll skin you alive!” muttered Jerry.
“And salt you,” added Frank.
But when they had untied the knots they gave chase and the plump jester was soon winded, although he had a good start. He puffed and panted as they chased him down the road in the dust. They caught up to him at the entrance to the lane leading into Carl Stummer’s farm, forcibly divested him of his hiking-boots, socks and necktie and proceeded to wreak revenge.
“We’ll cure you of practical jokes for a while,” promised Frank, with a grin, as he cast one boot into a field wherein a bad-natured bull was grazing, and the other into a field at the other side of the lane, with a heavy growth of thistles around the fence.
“See if you’re as good at untying knots as you are at tying them,” added Jerry, as he twisted Chet’s necktie into a veritable Chinese puzzle.
“And now see how it feels to walk around in your bare feet,” suggested Phil, as he hung one of Chet’s socks over the limb of a tree some distance down the road and placed the other in the middle of a clump of brambles.
Biff Hooper and Tony then released the protesting Chet. They had been sitting on him in the middle of the lane while the others were performing their kindly offices. “We’ll see you down at the farm,” said Biff airily, as the lads went chuckling down the lane in the direction of Stummer’s place.
Spluttering and vowing threats, Chet was forced to retrieve his clothes. When he sought to regain his boot from the pasture the bull saw him and rushed toward him with a bellow. Chet, in bare feet, just reached the fence in time and tumbled over into the bushes with the rescued boot. Then he had to step gingerly through the thistle patch in the other
