"We're going to the Country,"
Said little Buddy Jim.
And all his little play-mates said,
"How dull 'twill be, for him."
"It's like a great, big, vacant lot,
Just land and air and sky!"
"No boys! No games! Oh dear!" said Jim,
"Don't want to say Goodbye!"
BUT he had to say "Goodbye," because all the other boys' Mothers were calling them in to go to bed, and as Buddy Jim and his family were going to get an early start for their trip to the country in their automobile, there would be no time for saying farewells in the morning.
So all the boys ran home, shouting last messages to Buddy Jim as they went. "Bring us a tame bull-frog," said one, and "I'd like a grey squirrel to keep in a cage," said another.
As Buddy Jim heard the last door close behind the last small boy he felt very lonely indeed; so he sat down on the porch swing to think it over.
He could hear Daddy moving around in the house, getting everything ready for the early morning start, and he knew that it would not be very many minutes before he would be called in to go to bed; and he wanted to get his thinking done first, so he had to do it quickly.
There was one thing that he was very sure of; he did not want to go away and leave all his play-mates behind. "Course," he thought, "there would prob'ly be some fun in the country,"—but he knew that there was loads and loads of it in the city, base ball and three old cat, and swimming in the lake, and chasing butterflies, and working in the school gardens, helping Alex the crippled boy in the wheel chair to train his bull-pups, and "Oh, Goodness' Sakes! So many things! So many int'resting things to do."
"I don't want to go," he murmured aloud. "There'll be no one to play with; three whole months, and no one to play with! Not much fun to think about! I'll prob'ly just fade away and die!" he wailed.
Then somebody laughed, "Ha, ha, ha!" To be sure, it was a queer, squeaky little laugh, and Buddy Jim had never heard anything like it before, but it sounded very jolly.
"Now I wonder," said Buddy Jim, "what that was? It sounded just like somebody laughing! But there's no one here 'cept me."
"Hello, Buddy Jim," said the same squeaky little voice, "Hello! Can't you see me? Here I am, up above you, in the corner of the porch ceiling, hanging on a nail."