joke, they really seemed to be coming true.
“Don’t light the gas,” cautioned Bert, “or that will surely frighten it off. We can get our air guns, and I’ll go crawl out on the veranda roof back of it, so as to get it if possible.”
All this time the “peck-peck-peck” kept at the window, but just as soon as Bert went out in the hall to make his way through the storeroom window to the veranda roof, the pecking ceased. Harry hurried after Bert to tell him the bird was gone, and then together the boys put their heads out of their own window.
But there was not a sound, not even the distant flutter of a bird’s wing to tell the boys the messenger had gone.
“Back to bed for us,” said Harry, laughing. “I guess that bird is a joker and wants to keep us busy,” and both boys being healthy were quite ready to fall off to sleep as soon as they felt it was of no use to stay awake longer looking for their feathered visitor.
“There it is again,” called Bert, when Harry had just begun to dream of hazelnuts in Meadow Brook. “I’ll get him this time!” and without waiting to go through the storeroom, Bert raised the window and bolted out on the roof.
“What’s de matter down dere?” called Dinah from the window above. “’Pears like as if you boys had de nightmare. Can’t you let nobody get a wink ob sleep? Ebbery time I puts my head down, bang! comes a noise and up pops my head. Now, what’s a-ailin’ ob you, Bert?” and the colored girl showed by her tone of voice she was not a bit angry, but “chock-full of laugh,” as Bert whispered to Harry.
But the boys had not caught the bird, had not even seen it, for that matter.
Both Bert and Harry were now on the roof in their pajamas.
“What’s—the—matter—there?” called Dorothy, in a very drowsy voice, from her window at the other end of the roof.
“What are you boys after?” called Uncle William, from a middle window.
“Anything the matter?” asked Aunt Sarah, anxiously, from the spare room.
“Got a burgulor?” shrieked Freddie, from the nursery.
“Do you want any help?” offered Susan, her head out of the top-floor window.
All these questions came so thick and fast on the heads of Bert and Harry that the boys had no idea of answering them. Certainly the bird was nowhere to be seen, and they did not feel like advertising their “April-fool game” to the whole house, so they decided to crawl into bed again and let others do the same.
The window in the boys’ room was a bay, and each time the pecking disturbed them they thought the sound came from a different part of the window. Bert said it was the one at the left, so where the “bird” called from was left a mystery.
But neither boy had time to close his eyes before the noise started up again!
“Well, if that isn’t a ghost it certainly is a ban-shee, as Dinah said,” whispered Bert. “I’m going out to Uncle William’s room and tell him. Maybe he will have better luck than we had,” and so saying, Bert crept out into the hall and down two doors to his uncle’s room.
Uncle William had also heard the sound.
“Don’t make a particle of noise,” cautioned the uncle, “and we can go up in the cupola and slide down a post so quietly the bird will not hear us,” and as he said this, he, in his bath robe, went cautiously up the attic stairs, out of a small window, and slid down the post before Bert had time to draw his own breath.
But there was no bird to be seen anywhere!
“I heard it this very minute!” declared Harry, from the window.
“It might be bats!” suggested Uncle William. “But listen! I thought I heard the girls laughing,” and at that moment an audible titter was making its way out of Nan’s room!
“That’s Dorothy’s doings!” declared Uncle William, getting ready to laugh himself. “She’s always playing tricks,” and he began to feel about the outside ledge of the bay window.
But there was nothing there to solve the mystery.
“A tick-tack!” declared Harry, “I’ll bet, from the girls’ room!” and without waiting for another word he jumped out of his window, ran along the roof to Nan’s room, and then grabbed something.
“Here it is!” he called, confiscating the offending property. “You just wait, girls!” he shouted in the window. “If we don’t give you a good ducking in the ocean for this to-morrow!”
The laugh of the 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