noon
`` Do n't worry , '' returned her brother , laughing . `` I 've taken the trigger screw out of Purt 's gun and he could n't shoot it if he had forty cartridges in it . But I have n't told Purt , for the dear boy seems to place implicit confidence in the old gat as a defense against anything on two or four legs in the Big Woods . '' Although it was high noon when they were at Lumberport the Girls of Central High and their boy friends had not lunched there . Indeed , they waited to reach a certain pleasant grove which some of them knew about , on the south shore of the river , and several miles above the spot where Purt Sweet had taken his involuntary ducking . As the motorboats put ashore and the boys tied them to stubs in the high bank , they all began joking Purt about his plunge into the river . The dude had been obliged to exchange his natty outing suit of Lincoln green for a suit of oil-stained overalls that he found in the cabin of the _ Duchess _ .