“Well, I’m mighty glad to see you, an’ it’s too bad we was shut off so on our swell time. We counted on showin’ you everything, an’ hadn’t more’n begun when we got separated. It was all Bill Foss’s fault; he would go in swimmin’.”
“It don’t make any difference,” Josiah said soothingly. “I reckon Sadie an’ I saw a good deal more of Coney Island than you did. It seems to me we went over every inch of the place two or three times. Is Bill ugly ’cause we got lost?”
“He’s ravin’ like an Injun. Anybody’d think this blow-out had cost him all the money he’d made for a week, an’ he didn’t spend a single cent. He was goin’ on terribly the last time I saw him.”
“I’m sorry,” Josiah began apologetically, and Bob interrupted him impatiently:—
“Now don’t feel bad ’bout a little thing like that. If Bill don’t fancy the way things was run, he needn’t go agin; an’ I’ll bet he won’t, either. He made a regl’ar pig of hisself, fussin’ ’bout where he wanted to go, an’ what he wanted to see. But come on! let’s get up to the house as quick as we can.”
“Wait a minute; I’ve got some news to tell you,” Tom said. “What do you s’pose the fellers are goin’ to do to-morrow afternoon?”
“What fellers?”
“Pretty nigh all we know. They’re gettin’ up a reg’lar dinner, so’s to be friends with Josiah; an’ I reckon they’re thinkin’ of visitin’ out to his farm next summer.”
“Where are they goin’ to have it?” Bob asked excitedly.
“There’s an old canal-boat over in the Erie Basin what Tim Black knows about, an’ all the fellers are to buy somethin’ to eat. We strike there as soon as the mornin’s business is done.”