“I should say so,” admitted Tubby, who had listened to all this talk with interest, though never for a minute dreaming that it would enter into any affair in which they would be connected.
“You see,” continued Ralph, always willing to supply information, “we have it so arranged that we can carry several cartridges, as well as the coil of wire and the battery, on this little hand-cart that one man can push. So we can go to any part of the farm. Once we drove twenty miles with the outfit to clear up a tract for a gentleman who had never seen stumps blown to pieces in this way.”
Rob thought that was a clever idea. He impressed it upon his mind, though had he been asked why he did this he might have found it difficult to answer, except to say that he always liked to store such interesting facts away for future reference.
“How about that plowing with dynamite?” asked Sim. “Will Uncle Simon be doing any of that today, do you expect, Ralph?”
“I hardly think so,” the other replied. “It was laid out for tomorrow, and one gang working along those lines is enough at a time. The next thing on the morning’s programme is a visit to my fur farm. Are you feeling fit for a little walk?”
“We’re crazy to be on the jump,” affirmed Sim. “You must know that scouts hike a great deal, which is one thing that makes for their good health. Even Tubby here is pretty good at tramping, though you wouldn’t think it to look at his build. He has plenty of grit, and will stick everlastingly to anything he attempts, even if laboring under a handicap that none of the rest of us have to stand.”
Tubby had to bow to Sim after this compliment.
“Oh! I’ve got plenty of grit,” he admitted, “but there are times when I puff and blow terribly. That can’t be helped, you know. I’m built on such a generous order that I have to carry a heap more weight than most fellows.”
Presently they started forth, chattering like magpies as they walked along. The section of the big farm given over to Ralph’s experiment in fur raising was quite some distance from the house, being an angle where the primeval woods covered most of the “soil,” which, by the way, happened to be pretty much rock.
On the road they came across a pond where there were rushes, and plenty of frog-spawn floating on the water. Tubby became interested at once.