"'Cepting engines," interposed Step Hen, maliciously.
"Oh! well, I draw the line there, that's true," Bumpus admitted, with a shrug of his fat shoulders, as his eyes unconsciously dropped, so that he looked down into the depths of the lake, "a full mile deep," as he always said to himself.
"Oh! I saw a fish then!" he suddenly shouted, showing new excitement.
"Get your hook and line, Bumpus, and mebbe we'll have fried speckled trout or white fish for supper!" remarked Giraffe, with what he meant to be satire in his speech.
"Huh! I ain't that green about fishing, and you know it," remarked the other, as he gave the tall scout a look of scorn. "Anyhow, I can beat you a mile fishing any day in the week, Giraffe, and I don't care who hears me say it."
"Is that a challenge, Bumpus?" demanded Thad, seeing a chance for some fun to enliven their cruise.
"If he chooses to take me up, you can call it that," responded the fat boy, with a belligerent look at his rival.
"Oh! I'm ready to meet you half way, Bumpus; anything to oblige," Giraffe went on to say, sturdily. "I'd just like a good chance to show you up for a fish fakir. We've heard a heap about how you used to haul 'em in; now's your chance to prove that you're the big gun of this trip."
"All right, just as you say, and we'll leave it to Thad to lay down the terms of the contest, the loser to treat the crowd to a dinner when we get back home," Bumpus went on to say, with the took of one who would die sooner than give up.
"No need of that last," Allan asserted, with a shake of his head. "We expect to have a spread anyhow when we arrive back in Cranford, because there's plenty of money in the treasury of the Silver Fox Patrol; but the loser must do the drudgery that always goes with a dinner, and be the waiter for the other seven fellows. Do you both agree to that?"