ina. "Then we will not have to make dinner here, Bess."

"Agreed!" announced Grace. "There will be no more dishes to wash until
evening, then."

"Well, I don't know," Dave said, slowly. "Of course we like to have you
girls go along; but usually girls do the grub-getting and dishwashing on
a picnic."

"Nothing doing, then," declared Frank, laughing at him. "This crowd of
girls are going as invited guests, or not at all. We promise to be
ornamental, but not useful."

"You're ornamental, all right, in those blouses and bloomers," declared
Ferd, for the girls had discarded skirts about the camp, and felt much
more free and comfortable than they usually did.

"If worse comes to worst," said Mrs. Havel, smiling, "_I_ will be
the camp drudge, boys, for I want to see the lake shore in panorama."

"Oh, let 'em come," drawled Tubby, still lying on his back on the little
deck of the _Happy Day_. "They'll get hungry some time and
_have_ to cook for us."

And so, amid much bustle, and laughter, and raillery, the girls of Green
Knoll Camp joined the boys of Cave-in-the-Wood Camp in the motor boat
for a trip around the big lake.

CHAPTER XI

WHERE THE ACCIDENT HAPPENED

"And where is Professor Skillings?" asked Mrs. Havel, as the well-laden
launch drew away from the little natural landing which defended one end
of the girls' bathing beach at Green Knoll Camp.

"Bless your heart, ma'am," said Ferdinand Roberts, laughing, "the old
gentleman is trying to figure out one of Tubby's unanswerable
arguments--that is, I believe, what you'd call it."

"One of Tubby's unanswerable arguments?" cried Wyn. "For pity's sake!
what can that be?"

"Why, at breakfast this morning the professor got to 'dreaming,' as he
sometimes does. He tells us lots of interesting things when he begins
talking that way; but sometimes, if we are in a hurry to get away, we
have to put the stopper in," chuckled Ferd.

"Tubby usually does it. Tubby really _is_ good for something beside
eating and sleeping, girls--you wouldn't believe it!"

"You _do_ surprise us," admitted Bess Lavine, cuttingly.

"All right. But just wait and listen. We wanted to get away early and
come over here after you," said Ferd. "And the professor began to give
us one of his talks. This time it was on literature. By and by he says:

"'We are told that it took, Gray, author of 'An Elegy Written in a
Country Churchyard,' seven years to write that famous poem."

"'Gee!' e