Noble dashed into the orchard, and at once fell prostrate upon what seemed a log, but proved to be a large and solidly packed ice-cream freezer lying on its side.
Dark forms scrambled over the fence and vanished, but as Noble got to his feet he was joined by a dim and smallish figure in white--though more light would have disclosed a pink sash girdling its middle. It was the figure of Miss Florence Atwater, seething with furious agitations.
"Vile thieves!" she panted.
"Who?" Noble asked, brushing at his knees, while Florence made some really necessary adjustments of her own attire. "Who were they?"
"It was my own cousin, Herbert, and that nasty little Henry Rooter and their gang. Herbert thinks he hass to act perfectly horrable all the time, now his voice is changing!" said Florence, her emotion not abated. "Tried to steal this whole ice-cream freezer off the back porch and sneak it over the fence and eat it! I stuck a pretty long pin in Herbert and two more of 'em, every bit as far as it would go." And in the extremity of her indignation, she added: "The dirty robbers!"
"Did they hurt you?"
"You bet your life they didn't!" the child responded. "Tried to drag me back to the house! By the feet! I guess I gave 'em enough o' that!"
Then, tugging the prostrate freezer into an upright position, she exclaimed darkly: "I expect I gave ole Mister Herbert and some of the others of 'em just a few kicks they won't be in such a hurry to forget!" And in spite of his own gloomy condition, Noble was able, upon thinking over matters, to spare some commiseration for Herbert and his friend, that nasty little Henry Rooter and their gang. They seemed to have been at a disadvantage.
"I suppose I'd better carry the freezer back to the kitchen porch," he said. "Somebody may want it."
"'Somebody'!" Florence exclaimed. "Why, there's only two of these big freezers, and if I hadn't happened to suspeck somep'n and be layin' for those vile thieves, half the party wouldn't get any!" And as an afterthought, when Noble had pantingly restored the heavy freezer to its place by the kitchen door, she said: "Or else they'd had to have such little saucers of it nobody would of been any way like satisfied, and prob'ly all the fam'ly that's here assisting would of had to go without any at all. That'd 'a' been the worst of it!"