three girls in Nan’s room made the joke on the boys more complete, and as Uncle William went back to his room he declared to Mrs. Bobbsey and Aunt Emily that his girl, Dorothy, was more fun than a dozen boys, and he would match her against that number for the best piece of good-natured fun ever played.
“A bird!” sneered Bert, making fun of himself for being so easily fooled.
“A girls’ game of tick-tack!” laughed Harry, making up his mind that if he did not “get back at Dorothy,” he would certainly have to haul in his colors as captain of the Boys’ Brigade of Meadow Brook; “for she certainly did fool me,” he admitted, turning over to sleep at last.
CHAPTER XVII
Old Friends
“Now, Aunt Sarah,” pleaded Nan the next morning, “you might just as well wait and go home on the excursion train. All Meadow Brook will be down, and it will be so much pleasanter for you. The train will be here by noon and leave at three o’clock.”
“But think of the hour that would bring us to Meadow Brook!” objected Aunt Sarah.
“Well, you will have lots of company, and if Uncle Daniel shouldn’t meet you, you can ride up with the Hopkinses or anybody along your road.”
Mrs. Bobbsey and Aunt Emily added their entreaties to Nan’s, and Aunt Sarah finally agreed to wait.
“If I keep on,” she said, “I’ll be here all summer. And think of the fruit that’s waiting to be preserved!”
“Hurrah!” shouted Bert, giving his aunt a good hug. “Then Harry and I can have a fine time with the Meadow Brook boys,” and Bert dashed out to take the good news to Harry and Hal Bingham, who were out at the donkey house.
“Come on, fellows!” he called. “Down to the beach! We can have a swim before the crowd gets there.” And with renewed interest the trio started off for the breakers.
“I would like to live at the beach all summer,” remarked Harry. “Even in winter it must be fine here.”
“It is,” said Hal. “But the winds blow everything away regularly, and they all have to be carted back again each spring. This shore, with all its trimmings now, will look like a bald head by the first of December.”
All three boys were fine swimmers, and they promptly struck off for the water that was “straightened out,” as Bert said, beyond the tearing of the breakers at the edge. There were few people in the surf and the boys made their way around as if they owned the ocean.
Suddenly Hal thought he heard a call!
Then a man’s arm appeared above the water’s surface, a few yards away.
“Cramps,” yelled Hal to Harry and Bert, while all three hurried to where the man’s hand had been seen.
But it did not come up again.
“I’ll dive down!” spluttered Hal, who had the reputation of being able to stay a long time under water.
It seemed quite a while to Bert and Harry before Hal came up again, but when he did he was trying to pull with him a big, fat man, who was all but unconscious.
“Can’t move,” gasped Hal, as the heavy burden was pulling him down.
Bit by bit the man with cramps gained a little strength, and with the boys’ help he was towed in to shore.
There was not a life-guard in sight, and Hal had to hurry off to the pier for some restoratives, for the man was very weak. On his way, Hal met a guard who, of course, ran to the spot where Harry and Bert were giving the man artificial respiration.
“You boys did well!” declared the guard, promptly, seeing how hard they worked with the sick man.
“Yes—they saved—my life!” gasped the half-drowned man. “This little fellow”—pointing to Hal—“brought—me up—almost—from—the bottom!” and he caught his breath, painfully.
The man was assisted to a room at the end of the pier, and after a little while he became much better. Of course the boys did not stand around, being satisfied they could be of no more use.
“I must get those lads’ names,” declared the man to the guard. “Mine is ——,” and he gave the name of the famous millionaire who had a magnificent summer home in another colony, three miles away.
“And you swam from the Cedars, Mr. Black,” exclaimed the guard. “No wonder you got cramps.”
An hour later the millionaire was walking the beach looking for the life-savers. He finally spied Hal.
“Here, there, you boy,” he called, and Hal came in to the edge, but hardly recognized the man in street clothes.
“I want your name,” demanded the stranger. “Do you know there are medals given to young heroes like you?”
“Oh, that was nothing,” stammered Hal, quite confused now.
“Nothing! Why, I was about dead, and pulled on you with all my two hundred pounds. You knew, too, you had hardly a chance to bring me up. Yes, indeed, I want your name,” and as he insisted, Hal reluctantly gave it, but felt quite foolish to make such a fuss “over nothing,” as he said.
It was now about time for the excursion train to come in, so the boys left the water and prepared to meet their old friends.
“I hope Jack Hopkins comes,” said Bert, for Jack was a great friend.
“Oh, he will be along,” Harry remarked. “Nobody likes a good time better than Jack.”
“Here they come!” announced Hal, the next minute, as a crowd of children with many lunch boxes came running down to the ocean.
“Hello there! Hello there!” called everybody at once, for, of course, all the children knew Harry and many also knew Bert.
There were Tom Mason, Jack Hopkins, August Stout, and Ned Prentice in the first crowd, while a number of girls, friends of Nan’s, were in another group. Nan, Nellie, and Dorothy had been detained by somebody further up on the road, but were now coming down, slowly.
Such a delight as the ocean was to the country children!
As each roller slipped out on the sands the children unconsciously followed it, and so, many unsuspected pairs of shoes were caught by the next wave that washed in.
“Well, here comes Uncle Daniel!” called Bert, as, sure enough, down to the edge came Uncle Daniel with Dorothy holding on one arm, Nan clinging to the other, while Nellie carried his small satchel.
Santa Claus could hardly have been more welcome to the Bobbseys at that moment than was Uncle Daniel. They simply overpowered him, as the surprise of his coming made the treat so much better. The girls had “dragged him” down to the ocean, he said, when he had intended first going to Aunt Emily’s.
“I must see the others,” he insisted; “Freddie and Flossie.”
“Oh, they are all coming down,” Nan assured him. “Aunt Sarah, too,
