“Don’t forget the train leaves at nine,” warned Jock. “I’ve got the sleeping-car tickets, or at least I’ve got a section and a berth. That’ll be enough if Bob shouldn’t come, and if he does, why, two of us will have to double up, that’s all.”
Jock watched his friend as he ran down the stairway, and then turned back into his own room and continued his preparations for the proposed journey. Fishing tackle was rearranged, a gun was placed carefully in its case, and many details looked after which only a light-hearted lad, eager for a new experience, knew how to provide.
And certainly Josiah Cope apparently had everything to add to his happiness. His home was one of wealth, and all that father or mother could do had been done for him. He was an eager-hearted lad, as full of good impulses as one could well be, and as he moved busily about in his room it was not difficult to understand why he was such a universal favorite among his mates. His face had that expression of frankness and good-will which somehow draws to itself all who behold it, whether they will or no; and the devotion with which his mother watched over him was, in a measure, shared by his schoolboy friends, for there was something about him which appealed to their desire to protect and shield him from ruder blasts which others might endure more readily.
Not that Jock (for so his friends had shortened the somewhat homely name which the lad was the fifth in direct descent to bear) was in the least effeminate, but his slight figure, his dark eyes and somewhat delicate features, left one with the impression that he was not over-rugged. Whatever others might think, his mother was most decidedly of that opinion, and perhaps not without reason; for she had seen his brothers and sisters enter the home only to remain for a few brief years and then go out forever, and Jock, she frequently declared, was her all. If she meant all she had left, she was correct, and certainly the love he received in his home might easily have been shared with many, and then no one would have complained of receiving too small a portion.
But Jock had somehow survived the perilous treatment and apparently was as popular among his mates as he was in his home. And unknown to him it was the loving fears of his mother that had led to the experiment of a summer camp among the Thousand Islands in the hope that the breath of the great river and the outdoor life would bring a little more color into the cheeks that were too pale for a well-grown lad of seventeen to have.
The decision once made, the next move was to select his companions. This was not a difficult problem, and soon the choicest three of his friends in the academy from which Jock had just graduated, and with whom he hoped to go up to college in the coming autumn, were invited to join him,—an invitation quickly and eagerly accepted by all save Robert Darnell, the “Bob” of the preceding conversation, and the reasons which led him to hesitate have already been referred to.
Still all hoped that the sturdy Bob, the quiet self-contained lad, the leader of his class in scholarship, and easily the best bat in school, could come from his home in the country and join them.
Albert, or “Bert,” Bliss, who had been having the conversation we have already reported, was a short sturdy lad, always ready for a good time, his curly hair and laughing blue eyes causing one to laugh whenever he saw him, so irresistible was the contagion of his overflowing spirits.
The fourth member of the proposed party, Benjamin, or “Ben,” Dallett, was in many ways the opposite of Albert, and in school parlance they had sometimes been known as the “Siamese twins,” or “The Long and the Short of it.” Certainly they were much together, and just as certainly was Ben as much too tall as his friend was too short.