“Cadet shoes!” cried Tommy Tucker.  “Jimminy Crickets, I’ll bet it’s that Marshall Morgan and his crowd!”

“But this is a girl’s shoe,” protested Betty, pointing to another print.  “See the narrow toe?”

“Ada Nansen or Ruth Royal!” guessed Bobby quickly.  “They’re the only ones who won’t wear a sensible shoe.”

CHAPTER XXIII

JUST DESERTS

“Who,” demanded Betty, “is Marshall Morgan?”

“He’s a pest,” said Tommy, with characteristic frankness.  “He has one mission in life, and that is to plague those unfortunates who have to be under the same roof with him.  He never does anything on a large scale, but then a mosquito can drive you crazy, you know.”

“Dear me, he ought to know Ada,” rejoined Bobby.  “Perhaps he does.  She is a pestess, if there is such a word.”

“There isn’t,” Betty assured her.  “Anyway, this won’t get our lunch back.  What are you going to do, Bob?”

“A little Indian work,” was Bob’s reply.  “We’ll send out scouts to locate the thieves and then we’ll surround them and let the consequences fall.”

“I’ll be a consequence,” declared Bobby vindictively.  “I’ll fall on Ada with such force she’ll think an avalanche has struck her.”

Bob sent some of the boys to trace the steps, and while they were gone outlined his plans to the others.  Once they knew where the marauders were, they were to spread out fan-shape and swoop down upon the enemy.

“I figure they’ll get a safe distance away and then stop to eat the lunch,” said Bob.  “It is hardly likely that they will take the stuff back to school with them.”

“But Ada went to Edentown,” protested Libbie.  “We saw her in the bus, didn’t we, girls?  And Ruth, too.”

“They could easily come back in the same bus,” said Betty.  “Indeed, I’m willing to wager that is just what they did.  Miss Prettyman as a chaperone probably killed any desire Ada had to go shopping.”

The scouts came back after fifteen or twenty minutes to report that they had discovered the invaders camped under a large oak tree and preparing to open the boxes.

“They were laughing and saying how they’d put one over on you,” said Gilbert Lane.

“Well, they won’t laugh long,” retorted Bob grimly.  “How many are there?”

“Marshall Morgan, Jim Cronk, the Royce boys, all three of ’em, Hilbert Mitchell and George Timmins,” named Gilbert, using his fingers as an adding machine.  “Then there are nine girls.”

“Has one of them a brown velvet hat with a pink rose at the front and brown gaiters and mink furs and a perfectly lovely velvet handbag?” asked Betty.  “And did you see a girl with black pumps and white silk stockings and a blue tricotine dress embroidered with crystal beads?”

The boys looked bewildered.

“Don’t believe we did,” admitted Gilbert regretfully.  “But one of ’em called a skinny girl ‘Ada’ and somebody is named ‘Gladys.’”