"Needn't put me on the same plane as those fellows over yonder," objected Hicks, with a comic show of virtuous importance.
"Reckon you're too easy on 'em, Kingdon," said the Western lad. "That affair of the canoes wasn't serious. Stealing our permit and posing as the rightful owners of it is sure different."
"If your morals are as weak as your reasoning," laughed Kingdon, "I'm sorry for you chaps. What's sauce for the goose is good gravy for the gander."
"Oh, have it your own way; you always do, you blue-eyed mama's darling!" cried Larry Phillips. "No use fighting you. You'd raise a row if you didn't have the biggest apple and the reddest candy cane."
Derision left Kingdon unruffled. Opposition in any form made no difference to him when he once had a course of action mapped out. As he intimated, he had future use for Horace Pence and his friends on Storm Island. Just what this was Kingdon had no intention of divulging at the moment.
The fellows of the other camp kept well away from the Walcott Hall boys that day, and the next. Rex and his friends on either day went up to the clearing in the center of the island for short practice only, and they saw nothing of Pence and his comrades.
Kingdon insisted upon knocking down the engine of the catboat and going over the parts carefully. Both he and Red knew a good deal about automobile engines, and this was not so much different.
"It looks to your Uncle Edison Marconi," quoth Rex finally, "as though the main trouble with this bunch of junk is that, in a moment of hallucination, the owner mentioned it as an 'engine.' Old age has crept over this machine, and Father Time has left his indelible mark on certain parts of it. They must be renewed if we are to place any dependence at all in this form of motive power this summer."
"To get down to cases," scoffed Midkiff, "you want some new parts?"
"The engine does," Kingdon said sweetly. "I, personally, am fairly new."