“The common herd had better not talk to me for a while,” declared Bob, grinning. “I wouldn’t be able to notice anybody less than a general.”
“Same here,” said Jack. “Well, now, fellows, what are we going to do? Now that we’re on the ground with a fine chance to see the sights, we certainly aren’t going to go right home, are we?”
“I move we stay until we take in everything,” said Frank.
“Second the motion,” said Bob. “But I tell you, going around in this heat is going to cost me some weight.”
“Oh, it’ll just get you in condition for football,” said Jack. “You’re getting too fat, anyhow.”
That precipitated a general discussion of the forthcoming return to Harrington Hall Military Academy, the football prospects, the effect which recital of their thrilling summer would have on schoolmates, and other matters of similar ilk. It would be Jack’s last year, while Frank and Bob, a
class behind him, would have two years more before entering college. All three planned to enter Yale, of which both Mr. Hampton and Mr. Temple were graduates.
Three days they spent in sightseeing, paying visits to Mount Vernon, George Washington’s old home; the national cemetery at Arlington, quaint Annapolis, where the Naval College is located, and inspecting the capital and all the great public buildings.
Browned, looking taller and broader, every one, than at the beginning of summer, they arrived home at length a week before the opening of school, and spent the interim mainly in swimming and in reassembling the airplane owned by Frank and Bob, which had been shipped on from New Mexico, or in working at Jack’s radio plant.
Frank, as stated in a previous tale, was an orphan and lived with the Temples, Bob’s father being his guardian. Jack, whose mother was dead and whose father still was in New Mexico, decided to make his home at the Temples instead of opening his own home. The Hampton and Temple estates, situated on the far end of Long Island, adjoined each other.