Chapter XV: Trouble "bruin"

The other girls and Mrs. Havel were all down on the beach to meet the catboat and her passengers. To see Wyn and Bessie returning across the lake in the sailboat, instead of the canoes, forewarned the Go-Aheads that an accident had happened.

But although the girls were wet and bedraggled, the captain of the club made light of the affair.

"Where are your canoes?"

"What's happened?"

"Who is it with you?"

"What under the sun did you do--go overboard?"

Wyn answered all questions in a single sentence:

"We were capsized and lost the letters and things; but Polly picked us up and brought us home."

Then, amid the excited cries and congratulations, her voice rose again:

"Isn't she brave? What do you think of my Polly Jolly _now_? Can you blame me for being proud of her?"

"I tell you wh--what she is!" gasped Bessie. "She's the bravest and smartest girl I ever heard of."

"Good for you, Bess!" shouted Frank Cameron, helping the castaways ashore. "You're coming to your senses."

"And--and I'm sorry," blurted out Bess, "that I ever treated her so----"

Polly shoved off the catboat and proceeded to get under way again.

"Oh, _do_ come ashore, Polly!" begged Grace.

"I want to hug you, Miss Jarley!" cried Percy.

"What? All wet as I am now?" returned the boatman's daughter, laughing--although the laugh was not a pleasant one. "You make too much of this matter. We're used to oversets on the lake. It is nothing."

"You do not call saving two girls' lives _nothing_, my dear--surely?" proposed Mrs. Havel.

"If I saved them, I am very, very glad of it," returned Polly, gravely. "Anybody would be glad of _that_, of course, But you are making too much of it----"

"My father will not think so!" exclaimed the almost hysterical Bess. "When he learns of this he will not be able to do enough for you----"

"Your father can do nothing for me, Bessie Lavine!" cried the boatman's daughter, with sharpness.

"Oh, Polly!" said Wyn, holding out her arms to her.

"He'll--he'll _want_ to," pursued Bess, eagerly. "Oh! he will! He'd do anything for you now----"

"There's only one thing Henry Lavine can do for me," cried Polly, turning an angry face now toward the shore. "He can stop telling stories about my father. He can be kind to him--be decent to him. I don't want anything else--and I don't want that as pay for fishing you out of the lake!"

She had got the sail up again and now the breeze filled it. The _Coquette_ laid over and slipped away from the shore. Her last words had silenced all the girls--even Mrs. Havel herself.

Bess burst into tears. She was quite broken down, and Wyn went off with her to the tent, her arm over her shoulder, and whispering to her comfortingly.

"I don't care. Polly's served her right," declared Frank Cameron.

"I do not know that Polly can be blamed," Mrs. Havel observed. "But--but I wish she was more forgiving. It is not for herself that she speaks, however. It is for her father."

"And I'll wager he's just as nice a man as ever was," declared Frank. "I'm going to ask _my_ father if he will not do something for Mr. Jarley."

"Do so, Frances," advised the chaperon. "I think you will do well."

The accident cast a cloud over Green Knoll Camp for the evening. The girls who had been swamped went to bed and were dosed with hot drinks brewed over the campfire by Mrs. Havel. And when the boys came over in their fleet for an evening sing and frolic, they were sent back again to the island almost at once.

The boys did not take altogether kindly to this rebuff, and Tubby was heard to say:

"Isn't that just like girls? Because they got a little wet they must go to bed and take catnip tea, or something, and be quiet. Their nerves are all unstrung! Gee! wouldn't that make your ears buzz?"

"Aw, you're a doubting Thomas and always will be, Tub," said Ferd Roberts. "You never believe what you're told. You're as suspicious as the farmer who went to town and bought a pair of shoes, and when he'd paid for 'em the clerk says:

"'Now, sir, can't I sell you a pair of shoe trees?'

"'Don't you get fresh with me, sonny,' says the farmer, his whiskers bristling. 'I don't believe shoes kin be raised on trees any more 'n I believe rubbers grow on rubber trees, or oysters on oyster plants, b'gosh!'"

"Well," snarled the fat youth, as the other Busters laughed, "the girls are always making excuses. You can never tell what a girl means, anyway--not by what she _says_."

"You know speech was given us to hide our thoughts," laughed Dave.

"Say! I'll get square just the same--paddlin' clear over here for nothing. Humph! I know that Hedges girl is afraid there's bears in the woods? Say, fellers! I've _got_ it! Yes, I've got it!"

When Tubby spoke in this way, and his eyes snapped and he began to look eager, his mates knew that the fat youth's gigantic mind was working overtime, and they immediately gathered around and stopped paddling.

As Dave said, chuckling, a little later, "trouble was bruin!"

In the morning the girls found the two lost canoes on the shore below the camp. Polly and her father had evidently gone out in the evening, after the moon rose, and recovered them. Neither, of course, was damaged.

"And we must do something nice to pay them for it!" cried Grace.

Bessie was still deeply concerned over Polly's attitude.

"I am going to write father at once, and tell him all about it," she said. "And I _am_ sorry for the way I treated Polly at first. Do you suppose she will ever forgive me, Wyn?"

Just as Wyn had once said in discussing Bessie's character: when the latter realized that she was in the wrong, or had been unfair to anyone, she was never afraid to admit her fault and try to "make it up." But this seemed to be a case where it was very difficult for Bessie to "square herself."

The boatman's daughter had shown herself unwilling to be friendly with Bess. Nor was Polly, perhaps, to be blamed.

However, on this particular morning the girls of Green Knoll Camp had something besides Bessie's disturbance of mind and Polly Jarley's attitude to think about.

And this "something" came upon them with a suddenness that set the entire camp in an uproar. Grace, the dilatory, was picking berries before breakfast along the edge of the clearing, and popping them into her mouth as fast as she could find ripe ones.

"Come here and help, Grace!" called Percy from the tent where she was shaking out the heavy blankets. "I'm not going to do all my work and yours, too."

"You come and help _me_. It's more fun," returned Grace, laughing at her.

Then the lazy girl turned and reached for a particularly juicy blackberry, in the clump ahead of her. Percy saw her struck motionless for a second, or two; then the big girl fairly fell backward, rolled over, picked herself up, and raced back to the tents, her mouth wide open and her hair streaming in the wind.

"What _is_ the matter?" gasped Percy.

"Oh, Grace! you look dreadful! Tell us, what has happened!" begged Bessie, as the big girl sank down by the entrance to the tent, her limbs too weak to bear her farther.

"What has scared you so, Grace?" demanded Wyn, running up.

Grace's eyes rolled, she shut and opened her mouth again several times. Then she was only able to gasp out the one word:

"Bear!"

The other girls came crowding around. "What do you mean, Grace?" "Stop trying to scare us, Grace!" "She's fooling," were some of the cries they uttered.

But Wyn saw that her friend was really frightened; she was not "putting it on."

"You don't mean that it was a _real_ bear?" cried Frank Cameron.

"A bear, I tell you!" moaned Grace, rocking herself to and fro. "I told you they were here in the woods."

"Oh, dear me!" screamed Mina. "What shall we do?"

"You didn't _see_ it, Grace?" demanded Wyn, sternly. "You only heard it."

"I saw it, I tell you!"

"Not really?"

"Do--do you think I don't know a bear when I see one?" demanded Grace. "He--he'll be right after us----"

"No. If it was a real, wild bear he would be just as scared at seeing you as you would be at seeing him," remarked the decidedly sensible captain.

"He--he _couldn't_ be as scared as I am," moaned Grace, with considerable emphasis.

"I don't believe there's a bear within miles and miles of here!" declared Frank.

"Well! I declare I hope there isn't," cried Bess.

"I'll look," offered Wyn. "Grace just thought she saw something."

"A great, black and brown hairy beast!" moaned Grace. "He stood right up on his hind legs and stretched out his arms to me----"

"Enamored of all your young charms," giggled Frank.

"It's no joke!" gasped the frightened one.

"It _might_ be a bear, you know," quavered Mina.

The breakfast was being neglected. Mrs. Havel was down at the edge of the lake washing out some bits of lace. She had not heard the rumpus.

"I'm going to see," announced Frank, and ran back over the course Grace had come.

She reached the berry bushes. She parted them and peered through. She began to enter the jungle, indeed, in search of bruin.

And then the girls all heard a sort of snuffling growl--just the sort of a noise they _thought_ a bear must make. Frank jumped out of those bushes as though they had become suddenly afire!

"Wha--what did I tell you?" screamed Grace.

"He's there!" groaned Mina.

Then suddenly a dark object appeared among the saplings and underbrush.

"Look out, Frank! Run!" cried the other girls, in chorus; but Miss Cameron needed no urging; she ran with all her might!