“Enjoy it! I should say we would!” cried Bob. “We can take along a lot of things to eat, and——”
He stopped as he saw his chums smiling at him. A flicker of amusement also came into the face of Mrs. Johnson.
“Well, I certainly will be glad if you boys can locate the professor,” she said. “Tell him I was quite worried about him. But then I don’t s’pose that will do any good—he’ll do just the same thing next time—or worse. But you can send me word how he is when you find him, and that’s more than he’d do. When he writes all he thinks about is his bugs, and he’ll write and tell me how many of such-and-such an insect he has. He gives them their Latin names, and he might just as well talk Italian to me. But you boys will look after him; won’t you?”
“We sure will!” exclaimed Jerry. In spite of the feeling he had that Dr. Snodgrass had not played fair with him, the tall lad could not forget the affection he had for the absent-minded scientist.
“Well, if we’re going to make that long trip we’d better set about it,” spoke Ned. “We’ll have to go home and make preparations, I suppose.”
“Oh, sure!” broke in Bob. “It’ll take a lot of grub——”
“Can’t you think of anything else, Chunky?” asked Jerry, with a smile. “Of course we’ll have to make some plans,” he went on, “and arrange to ship the motor boat. We’d better get busy, I guess.”
They said good-bye to Mrs. Johnson, and, a little later, were on their way back home in the auto. The visit to the professor’s house had detained them somewhat, as Mrs. Johnson insisted that they stay to dinner.
“We can’t make Cresville by night,” observed Ned, looking at his watch, when they were on the road. Ned was at the wheel.