them across the line several lengths behind. And the whole crowd were
shouting with laughter over Purt's mishap.

"I wish you'd kept your vest on, Purt," snarled Lance. "There'd been
some satisfaction in your getting it wet. My goodness! what a lubber you
are in a boat!"

"Weally, I couldn't help it, dear boy," sighed Pretty.

"Just the same, you crabbed the race," grunted Chet. "Now the girls have
put it all over us."

And the girls certainly did not spare the boys, and joked at their
expense all the way home. But the day was voted a very merry one and Eve
and Otto went home in the evening strongly of the opinion that the boys
and girls of Central High were a jolly company indeed. Eve promised
Laura before she went home that, if she could pass the exams, for junior
classes under Principal Sharp, she would surely attend Central High in
the fall.

"We've got a splendid bit of athletic timber in Eve Sitz," Laura said,
discussing the matter with Jess and the Lockwood twins.

"I hope she'll take up rowing. We can put her into Celia's place on the
eight for next year, and then there will be no danger of Hester Grimes
getting it," said Jess, who was very outspoken.

"She is better material for stroke than Hester," admitted Laura.

"And enough sight better tempered," Dora observed.

"You know what Hester is doing now?" demanded Jess, in anger.

"What is it?" asked Dorothy.

"She is trying to make the other girls think that the Executive
Committee only cares about the eight-oared boat race, and that we'll put
up no fight for Central High's entries in the other events."

"She is going to make trouble if she can," declared Dora.

"It isn't so," Laura said, firmly. "There is going to be a fine canoe
race--we look to you twins to make good for Central High in that."

"We'll do our best," said the twins together, nodding.

Aunt Dora did not approve of the twins being on the lake so much; in her
girlhood "young ladies" of the twins' age did not row, and paddle, and
swim, and otherwise imitate boys.

"And I remember that you never were any fun, as a girl, Dora," observed
Mr. Lockwood, at the supper table that night, when his sister uttered
her usual criticisms of the twins' conduct. "You squealed if you came
across a caterpillar, and a garter snake sent you into spasms, and it
tired you to walk half a mile, and----"

"Thanks be! I was no tomboy," gasped Aunt Dora.

"Far from it," said the flower lover. "And mother