“All right. I was afraid you might oversleep. Now be careful to-day, won’t you, dear?”
Again you assured her. You heard her soft steps going back down the stairs. She never failed to make your rising her own, both to undertake that you should not be disappointed and to deliver a final loving caution.
Your dressing, although accompanied by sundry yawns, was accomplished quickly, your attire for the day being by no means complicated. Your face and hair received what Maggie, the girl, would term “a lick and a promise,” and kitchenward you sped.
To delay to eat the crackers and milk that had been provided was a waste of time; but you had been instructed, and so you gobbled them down. On the kitchen table was your lunch, tied in shape convenient to stow about your person. It was a constant fight on your part with mother to make her keep your lunches at the minimum. Had she her way, you would have traveled with a large basket; and what boy wanted to be bothered with baskets and pails and things?
Upon the back porch, where you had stationed them in minute preparation, had been awaiting you all night the can of bait and the loyal pole. You seized them. Provisioned and armed, you ran into the open and looked expectantly for Hen.
From Hen’s house came no sign of life. You whistled softly; no Hen. Your heart sank. Once or twice before Hen had failed you. Affairs at his house seemed to be not so systematized as at yours.
You whistled louder; no Hen. You called, your voice echoing along the still somnolent street.
“All right,” suddenly responded Hen, sticking his head out of his window.
He was not even up!
You were disgusted. One might as well not go fishing as to start so late and have all the other fellows there first; and you darned “it” gloomily.