“Certainly—and matches, too,” said Lafe with another sneer.
“Well, how about some gasoline for the engine?”
Lafe grew red in the face, and turned away impatiently.
“And some oil for the engine?”
“You don’t expect a fellow to think of everything at once, do you?” snorted Lafe. “I haven’t been hanging over this thing for a week. I’ve had something else to think about.”
“Seems as if Bud had done a good deal of thinking,” suggested President Elder. “Hurry back, Bud, we may need you again.”
Bud Wilson had long been pointed out as the prize example of juvenile perverseness. Many persons, including Lafe Pennington, were in the habit of referring to him as a “bad” boy. But in this, they were wrong. Bud’s differences from other boys of better reputation meant no more than that he was headstrong and so full of ideas that the routine of school went hard with him. The boy often shocked his teacher. Instead of the old-fashioned speaking pieces, Bud was apt to select some up-to-date newspaper story or verse. Once he even ventured to recite some poetry of his own, in which Miss Abbott, the teacher, did not particularly shine.
When he was left an orphan and went to live with Attorney Cyrus Stockwell, the lively youngster gave up most of his school hours to drawing engines. At that time, he planned to be an engineer. Succeeding that, he aspired to be a detective. In this new ambition, he read a great deal of literature concerning crime. But this new profession was soon forgotten with the advent of aeroplanes. From the moment Bud realized what a heavier-than-air flying-machine meant, he was a rapt disciple of the world’s new aviators.
Verses of his own and detective stories were now forgotten. Given the task of writing an essay, by Miss Abbott, for some lapse of discipline, he produced a wonderful composition on “The Airship.” It was so full of Jules Verne ideas that Miss Abbott visited Bud’s foster father, and suggested that something be done with the boy.
The something that Attorney Stockwell did was to take Bud out of school and put him at work on rich Mr. Greeley’s farm, where, for a time, he labored in a gravel pit shovelling. Learning to operate the steam shovel, he became the engineer, and after that, for some months in the summer, he had been Mr. Greeley’s chauffeur. Just now he was back home without a job, and a half promise of another try at school when it opened.