Danny Grin groaned dismally as he remarked:
"That one detail of the arrangements just about spoils all the pleasure of the trip, then."
"No, it won't," Dick reported promptly. "I've looked into that. The wheels are well greased—-the axles, I mean. I've loaded the cart with more weight than we shall put on it, and it pushes along very easily. If we come to a bad stretch of road, then two fellows can manage the cart at a time. The scheme saves us a lot of expense, fellows."
"Will all the food go on the cart, tool" asked Dave.
"Each one of us can carry some of the food," Dick replied.
Then his eye, roving from face to face, took in the fact that his chums were not impressed with the proposed method of transportation.
"Cheer up, fellows," he begged. "You'll find that it will be pretty easy, after all."
"I'd rather believe you, Dick, than have it proved to me," was Tom Reade's dejected answer. "I thought we were going away for pleasure and rest, but I suppose we can work our way if we have to."
None of these high school boys are strangers to our readers. Everyone remembers the first really public appearance of Dick & Co., as set forth in the first volume of the "Grammar School Boys Series." Then we met them again in the first volume of the "High School Boys Series," entitled, "The High School Freshmen." That stormy first year of high school life was one that Dick & Co. could never forget. In the second volume, "The High School Pitcher," we found Dick & Co. actively engaged in athletics, though in their sophomore year they did not attempt to make the eleven, but waited until the spring to try for the baseball nine. In the third volume, "The High School Left End," Dick & Co. were shown in their struggles to make the eleven, against some clever candidates, and also in the face of bitter opposition from a certain clique of high school boys who considered themselves to be of better social standing than Dick and his chosen comrades.
In the "High School Boys' Vacation Series" our readers have followed Dick & Co. through their summer pleasures and sports. In the first volume of this present series, "The High School Boys' Canoe Club," the adventures are described that fell to the lot of Prescott, Darrin, Reade and the others in the summer following their freshman high school year. In the second volume, "The High School Boys In Summer Camp," our readers found an absorbing narrative of the startling doings of Dick & Co. in the summer following their sophomore year. And now, in this present volume, we at last come upon our young friends at the beginning of their vacation season after the completion of their junior year, with its football victories. Now they are budding seniors, ready to enter the final, graduating class of Gridley High School in the coming autumn.