“What makes you play base-ball and cricket, and why do you go fishing and boat-riding every chance you get? Such sports are not necessary to your existence—you could live without them—but they serve to fill up the time when you don’t feel like doing anything else. That’s one reason why books like ‘Boy Trappers’ are written—to keep you in the house and help you while away a leisure hour that you might otherwise spend in the streets with bad boys. Oh, Guy! Guy!”
“Now, don’t you begin your laughing again,” said his companion.
At this moment a door opened and the boys heard Mr. Harris calling.
“Guy!” he shouted.
“Sir!” was the response.
“Come in now.”
“What’s the matter?” asked Henry.
“Oh, we have a reading lesson every night, and I have to help,” replied Guy with great disgust. “We’re reading Bancroft’s History of the United States, and I despise it. I can’t understand half of it, but father makes me read aloud twenty minutes every night, and scolds because I can’t tell him the meaning of all the hard words. Now, Hank, are you going with me or not?”
“Of course I am not. I’ll not give up such a home, and such a father and mother as I’ve got for the sake of living in a wilderness all my life.”
“Well, you won’t repeat what I have said to you, will you?”