“Well, he’s younger than me, and I used to go to school with him; he’s one of those fellows who don’t like many things a wide-awake chap like me does, and he has a way of telling you of it to your face.”
“That’s better than doing it behind your back,” suggested Jim.
“He has no right to do it at all; what business is it of his if I choose to smoke, take a drink now and then, and lay out the other boys when they get impudent?”
“It’s nothing to him, of course; we’ll settle his hash for him before we go back. I shouldn’t wonder,” added Tom, with a wink, “if he should find that bicycle of his missing some day.”
“That would hit him harder than anything else,” remarked Bob, pleased with the remark; “I’ve thought of the same thing, but haven’t had a good chance to spoil it. I say, boys, we’ll have just the jolliest times you ever heard of.”
“It won’t be our fault if we don’t,” assented Jim, while his companion nodded his head as an indorsement of the same views.
“Is there good hunting in these parts?”
“It, isn’t as good as up among the Adirondacks or out West in the Rocky Mountains, but I think we can scare up some sport. I’ve a good hunting dog, and as soon as we get things in shape we’ll see what we can do. What sort of game do you prefer?”
“Anything will suit me—elephants, tigers, rhinoceroses, and the like; or, if we can’t do better, I wouldn’t mind a bear or deer.”
“I daresn’t promise much, but we’ll have the fun anyway, and that’s what we all want more than anything else.”