“Go on! I wouldn’t wear one!”
“Well, make up your minds, and we’ll all go together,” urged Cora. “We can go up in the motor boat as far as possible, and take buckboards the rest of the way. We’d like to have you boys on hand when we begin the investigation of Camp Surprise.”
“Oh, ho! Afraid?” laughed Walter. “I thought there was a mouse in the woodpile somewhere, Jack, my boy!”
“Nothing of the sort!” came from Cora. “Besides, you’re thinking of the mouse and the lion. It is an African gentleman of color who makes the woodpile his habitation.”
“That’s right,” admitted Walter. “I never was very good at dates anyhow.”
“Fig paste is more to your liking. Have a chocolate,” urged Bess.
“We want you along to bear testimony when we have routed out the mischief-makers,” said Cora, after the laughter had subsided. “Your bungalow is near ours, and we can call to you to come and hold the disturbers when we capture them.”
“Is that what you’re going to do?” asked Jack.
“Certainly,” returned Belle, as if the girls had never hesitated.
“Well, it would be a pity to disappoint you,” Walter declared. “We’ll go when they do, Jack. But – whisper – they’ll be more than a week yet. I know girls.”
“You only think you do,” mocked Cora. “We’ll be ready before you are.”
Then they began to talk seriously and plan for their summer outing. It was not the first time they had been away together, the boys and girls often going to the same resort and occupying adjacent bungalows or cottages. In this way they divided such work as there was, and multiplied the possible good times.
Mrs. Kimball was to go to the Thousand Islands with her sister, which left Jack and Cora free to do as they pleased. Mr. and Mrs. Robinson would, as usual, occupy their seashore cottage, but Bess and Belle would not join them there until later in the season, going first to Camp Surprise with Cora.
“Well, now it’s all settled,” declared Cora, after a season of talk. “We’ll go to Camp Surprise two weeks from to-day. I’ll tell mother, and have her write to Mrs. Floyd to have everything in readiness.”
“Even the ghosts?” demanded Walter.
“Even the ghosts,” agreed Cora, accepting the implied challenge.
“Good!” cried Jack.
A few days after this the three girls, all of whom belonged to a church home mission society, went to take some medicine and food to an old woman who was one that the society looked after. This dependent lived some distance out of Cheerful Chelton, and the Robinson twins brought their car in which to carry the baskets of food.
They had done their little errand of mercy and on the way back Cora proposed that they stop at Ye Olde Spinning Wheel for some tea or ice cream, as the girls preferred.
They had the place practically to themselves, as it was not the hour when most motorists stopped for refreshments. Cora and her chums spoke to the manager, and noticed that she seemed a bit downcast.
“What is the matter?” asked Cora.
“Oh, it’s something that happened last night. You know I told you I had two tickets for the opera. My friend gave me the money to get them, and I bought them off the two young fellows who were here one day last week.”
“Yes, it was the time my auto was taken,” Cora said.
“Of course! I ought to have remembered. Well, I bought two tickets for the opera from those men at a reduced price.”
“And couldn’t your friend go with you?” asked Belle sympathetically.
“Oh, yes. He came for me all right. But when we went to go in they wouldn’t let us.”
“Who wouldn’t let you, those two young men?” asked Cora eagerly.
“No, I only wish it had been the young men. I’d have had ’em arrested. But the doorkeeper would not let me and my friend in on those tickets.”
“Why not?” asked Bess.
“Because he said they were counterfeit. And after my friend had given me his good money for them. I was that angry I could have cried! Counterfeit tickets! What do you know about that?”
CHAPTER VI – OFF TO CAMP
“Really, were they bogus tickets?” asked Cora after a pause.
“And wouldn’t they let you in?” Bess cried.
“How could they tell they were counterfeits?” was Belle’s question.
“’Cause some one else had our seats, or the seats our tickets called for,” said Miss Magin, the manager of the tea room. “This is how it was. I got all ready to go – it was my day off, you know, and I had a new dress. Had my nails manicured and went to a hair dresser, for I wanted to look nice. My friend is some swell dresser himself, and you know how it is. You want to be a credit when a person goes to the trouble to take you out.”
“I know,” Cora murmured.
“Well, I did look nice, if I do say it myself,” went on Miss Magin, “and I was quite pleased when I handed my friend back a dollar.
“‘What’s this for?’ he asked me.
“‘What I saved on the tickets,’ I told him, and I mentioned how I’d bought two from the fellows who were here trying to sell some railroad transportation as well. My friend was quite pleased, of course, for he has to work hard for his money. ’This’ll do to help get a lunch after the show,’ he said, and I was glad.
“Well, we got to the opera house all right, but they wouldn’t let us in. That is, they wouldn’t give us the seats our coupons called for. We did get in, but when we went to the seats there was a couple already in them.
“My friend thought the usher had made a mistake, and there was a mix-up for a while. Then the usher got the other couple’s coupons and they were the same number as ours. They called the manager, and he said our tickets were counterfeit.
“First my friend wouldn’t believe it, but the manager showed by the other tickets taken in that ours were different. The print was the same, and so was the color of the pasteboard, but it was stiffer than the regular tickets. There was no way out of it. We had been cheated, and so had some other people who had bought tickets from those fellows. There was quite a disturbance.”
“It’s too bad!” exclaimed Cora. “Then you didn’t see the opera after all?”
“Oh, sure I did!” exclaimed Miss Magin. “My friend wouldn’t see me disappointed. He bought other tickets, though they weren’t as good as the ones I had – or thought I had.”
“And they really were counterfeit?” repeated Bess.
“Yes, but cleverly done. It was only the quality of the paper, or pasteboard, that showed,” went on the tea room manager. “If we had gotten there first we might have had our seats without any trouble, though of course when the folks came in that had the real tickets it would have been found out, I s’pose.”
“And you say others also bought the bogus tickets?” Cora asked.
“Yes, quite a few. Got them from the same fellows, too, who told the same story about being hard up for cash, and wanting to sell the tickets they’d purchased.”
“Were they the same young men?” asked Belle.
“The descriptions were the same as the two who were here, and who must have taken your auto, Miss Kimball. When I found out our tickets were worthless I told the manager about your car, though of course he had heard of it from reading the paper. Oh! I just wish I could have them