“Spoil my Christmas! The idea! It will be a real merry Christmas again, without two noisy boys making life a botheration to me.”
“In that case, then, we’ll go camping,” said Frank.
When they told Chet Morton of their interview with Elroy Jefferson, that youth was loud in his delight. He insisted promptly on being included in the proposed outing.
“The family is going to Boston for the holidays,” he said. “They were going to leave me at home alone. It looked like a fine Christmas! But now—oh, boy! When do we start?”
“Three days before Christmas.”
“Great! Who else is coming?”
“We promised Biff Hooper.”
“Sure! Biff’s a good scout. But don’t make the party too large. That cabin won’t hold very many.”
“We figured on just the four of us,” said Frank. “The iceboat won’t hold any more, anyway.”
“Fine. We’d better get together tomorrow and decide how much grub we should take along. We’ve got to eat, you know.”
“You would bring that up,” laughed Joe. “No fear of going short of supplies when you’re in the party. You’ll see that we take enough.”
“I must keep up my strength,” returned Chet, unabashed.
When the boys met Biff Hooper and told him that the outing was assured and that Cabin Island was available, the pugilistic lad turned several handsprings in the snow by way of expressing his delight.
“Yeah!” he shouted. “That lets me out. My Uncle Oscar and his five kids are coming to spend Christmas at our place, and it would have been up to me to entertain the little pests. Now I’m out of that! Hurray!”
“This trip seems to be popular,” remarked Frank. “Well, you’d better start figuring out what you can contribute in the way of grub. We each carry our own blankets.”
“Suits me. I’ll take all the grub, if you want.”
Next day, the four gathered at Biff Hooper’s home and, in a very businesslike manner, drew up a list of requirements for the trip, and apportioned what would be required of each. Inasmuch as Frank and Joe had secured the privilege of Cabin Island and were also giving the use of the iceboat, Chet and Biff insisted on looking after the matter of food. Each boy was to take along whatever cooking utensils he could beg or borrow from home.
In this manner, with conferences after school and during the noon hours, the boys made their preparations for the outing, and the last days of the autumn term slowly dragged past. They had decided to leave Bayport three days before Christmas, almost immediately after school closed, and the intervening time was occupied by putting the iceboat in readiness and accumulating everything they would need.
“We don’t want to keep trotting back to the city every day for something we’ve forgotten,” Chet pointed out.
At last, everything was in readiness. The food supplies were packed, the blankets were stowed away, the iceboat had been overhauled, the boys had loaded skates, skis, and snowshoes on their craft, and everything had been checked over so that nothing would be forgotten. News of the proposed outing had circulated among the other boys at the Bayport high school and the Hardy boys were besieged with requests from many of their chums who wanted to accompany them. But they were obliged to refuse. The cabin was large, but it would not accommodate everybody.
Finally, school closed. There were the usual closing exercises, which the lads sat through impatiently, and then they raced toward home, for the trip to Cabin Island was definitely scheduled for the morrow.
Mrs. Hardy had taken liberties with the calendar, and when the boys came home that night they found, to their unbounded delight and astonishment, that the Christmas dinner had been set ahead. There was a turkey in the oven and the kitchen was redolent with the savory odors of a Christmas feast.
“Whoopee!” cried Joe. “We shan’t miss our Christmas after all!”
The dinner, being in the nature of a surprise, surpassed all previous Christmas dinners. Somehow, the turkey was more succulent, the mince pie had a better flavor, simply because the boys had been resigning themselves to missing the good things that year. The mere fact that the calendar indicated Christmas Day as being actually four days off seemed to matter little.
Mr. Hardy had even ordered a Christmas tree and, after dinner, when the boys went into the library and found that even this crowning touch had not been omitted, they felt that life had little more to offer. The tree glittered with lights and there were certain mysterious packages in tissue paper that aroused speculations. Frank and Joe immediately dashed upstairs and returned with the presents they had bought for their parents and for Aunt Gertrude, which they distributed at the base of the tree.
“I think we’re lucky,” said Frank, when they went to bed that night.
“Lucky! I never expected to have Christmas and our outing too,” returned his brother.
“Christmas dinner, a tree, and our presents!”
“I hope Chet and Biff get off as well.”
They fell asleep, happy.
In the morning, the usual Christmas ceremony of opening the presents was observed. Frank and Joe were unusually fortunate. The usual gifts of clothing, which included neckties, scarfs, socks and shirts came first, then for each of the lads came a complete outing costume of breeches, mackinaw shirts and short coats. To top it all came two small calibre rifles, each with a box of ammunition.
“Don’t kill too many rabbits,” laughed their father.
Christmas was complete. Frank and Joe had given their parents one of the newest and finest radio sets and to Aunt Gertrude they gave several volumes of poems, as that lady was very fond of reading. For once in her life, their aunt did not sniff.
“Just what I wanted!” she beamed. “I have always adored Longfellow!”
At that moment the telephone rang. Chet was calling.
“All set!” he reported. “Biff and I are down here waiting.”
“We’ll be with you in a minute,” said Frank.
So the Hardy boys set out on their vacation outing to Cabin Island. Little did they dream of the
