"h.e.l.lo, anything the matter?" was Bob's greeting. "You look rather glum."

"So would you," Betty informed him, "if you were starving after a morning's work and your lunch was stolen."

"Gee, that is tough!" exclaimed Bob sympathetically. "Who stole it?"

"We don't know," volunteered Bobby. "But all those boxes couldn't take wings and fly away."

"You go back and get the fellows," Bob commanded Tommy Tucker. "We were having a potato roast down by the lake, and while the potatoes were baking some of us came up for more wood," he explained to the girls. "We thought we heard voices, and so I whistled."

Tommy Tucker was flying down to the lake before half of this explanation was given.

"Have you a holiday, too?" Betty asked. "We're out to get decorations for the play."

"It's the colonel's birthday," explained Bob, "and the old boy gave us the day off. Here come the fellows."

Half a dozen more cadets joined them, all boys the girls had met at the games. They were loud in their expressions of sympathy for the disappointed picnickers and promptly offered their potatoes as refreshments when they should be done.

"Oh, we're going to get that lunch back," announced Bob Henderson confidently. "Look here!"

He pointed to some footprints in a bit of muddy ground.

"Cadet shoes!" cried Tommy Tucker. "Jimminy Crickets, I'll bet it's that Marshall Morgan and his crowd!"

"But this is a girl's shoe," protested Betty, pointing to another print.

"See the narrow toe?"

"Ada Nansen or Ruth Royal!" guessed Bobby quickly. "They're the only ones who won't wear a sensible shoe."

CHAPTER XXIII

JUST DESERTS

"Who," demanded Betty, "is Marshall Morgan?"

"He's a pest," said Tommy, with characteristic frankness. "He has one mission in life, and that is to plague those unfortunates who have to be under the same roof with him. He never does anything on a large scale, but then a mosquito can drive you crazy, you know."

"Dear me, he ought to know Ada," rejoined Bobby. "Perhaps he does. She is a pestess, if there is such a word."

"There isn't," Betty a.s.sured her. "Anyway, this won't get our lunch back.

What are you going to do, Bob?"

"A little Indian work," was Bob's reply. "We'll send out scouts to locate the thieves and then we'll surround them and let the consequences fall."

"I'll be a consequence," declared Bobby vindictively. "I'll fall on Ada with such force she'll think an avalanche has struck her."

Bob sent some of the boys to trace the steps, and while they were gone outlined his plans to the others. Once they knew where the marauders were, they were to spread out fan-shape and swoop down upon the enemy.

"I figure they'll get a safe distance away and then stop to eat the lunch," said Bob. "It is hardly likely that they will take the stuff back to school with them."

"But Ada went to Edentown," protested Libbie. "We saw her in the bus, didn't we, girls? And Ruth, too."

"They could easily come back in the same bus," said Betty. "Indeed, I'm willing to wager that is just what they did. Miss Prettyman as a chaperone probably killed any desire Ada had to go shopping."

The scouts came back after fifteen or twenty minutes to report that they had discovered the invaders camped under a large oak tree and preparing to open the boxes.

"They were laughing and saying how they'd put one over on you," said Gilbert Lane.

"Well, they won't laugh long," retorted Bob grimly. "How many are there?"

"Marshall Morgan, Jim Cronk, the Royce boys, all three of 'em, Hilbert Mitch.e.l.l and George Timmins," named Gilbert, using his fingers as an adding machine. "Then there are nine girls."

"Has one of them a brown velvet hat with a pink rose at the front and brown gaiters and mink furs and a perfectly lovely velvet handbag?" asked Betty. "And did you see a girl with black pumps and white silk stockings and a blue tricotine dress embroidered with crystal beads?"

The boys looked bewildered.

"Don't believe we did," admitted Gilbert regretfully. "But one of 'em called a skinny girl 'Ada' and somebody is named 'Gladys.'"

"Never mind the clothes," Bobby told him gratefully. "We knew those two were mixed up in this."

They started cautiously, mindful of Bob's instructions not to make a noise, and succeeded, after ten or fifteen minutes creeping, in getting within hearing distance of the despoilers.

"You girls will have to tend to your friends," grinned Bob. "You can't expect us to discipline them. But we'll give the boys something to remember!"

The party spread out, and at his signal whistle they sprang forward, shouting like wild Indians. Straight for the oak tree they charged and closed in on the group beneath it. Those seated there rose to their feet in genuine alarm.

"Rush 'em!" shouted Bob.

Pushing and scrambling, those in the attacking party began to force the others down the narrow path. The boys were struggling desperately and the girls were resisting as best they could and some were crying.

"Let us out!" wept Ada. "Ow! You're stepping on me! Let us out!"

She kicked blindly, and fought with her hands. The first person she grasped was Ruth, who was nearly choked before she could jerk her fur collar free.

"I will get out!" panted Ada. "Push, girls!"

The circle opened for them, and following Ada they dashed through straight into a tangle of blackberry bushes. Half mad with rage and blind from excitement they ploughed their way through, fighting the bushes as though they were flesh and blood arms held out to stop them. When they were clear of the thicket their clothes were in tatters and their faces and hands scratched and bleeding cruelly.

There was nothing for them to do but to go back to the school and try to invent a plausible story for their condition. All the cold cream in the handsome gla.s.s jars on Ada's dressing table could not heal her smarting face and thoughts that night.

Bob and his friends continued on their resolute way, pushing the luckless cadets before them. Once out of the woods, they seized them by the jacket collars and rushed them down to the lake and into the icy waters. They generously allowed them to come out after a few minutes immersion, and the sorry, dripping crew began the long run that would bring them to dry clothes and, it is to be hoped, mended ways.

"Now the potatoes are done," Bob reported, after examining the oven hollowed out and lined with stones. "Why not combine forces and eat?"

Every one was famished, and they found plenty of good things left in the boxes. The uninvited guests could not have had those packages open long before they were overtaken.