"That settles my neat little scheme," sighed the runt, disconsolately. "Don't understand why it is that everything I happen to propose, Larry or somebody else always sits down on it, kerchunk! It's discouraging to genius, I say, and might keep a budding inventor from ever attaining his manifest destiny."
"Hear! hear!" chuckled Andy.
As for the tall boy, he came near having a fit, so doubled up with laughter did this important remark on the part of his small chum leave him.
"No danger of you ever being discouraged, or left at the stake, Elephant," he managed to say, presently. "You come up smiling after every backset. You've sure got grit, and to spare, if they did forget you when handing out bone and muscle."
"And I bet you if I'd only had the chance, fellows, I'd have dropped into the bally old lake, just like Andy did, and saved that sweet cherub, Tommy Cragan!" declared the "Bug," as Larry often called his diminutive chum, when he tired of using his other misplaced nickname.
"Sure you would," said Andy. "I was only lucky in having the chance, that's all. Why, I don't see anything in that to make a fuss over. It was just like a picnic to me. Frank wanted to go the worst kind, but he couldn't let go the levers of our new and dandy machine, which might sail away up in the clouds."
"Oh! how I envy both of you fellows!" sighed Elephant, placing a hand on his breast, though Larry told him that his heart was probably located on his right side, which would account for the flutter he fell into whenever he thought he detected an opportunity for distinguishing himself approaching.
But everybody took these sharp sayings of Larry Geohegan in the same happy-go-lucky spirit in which they were uttered. No one had more friends and fewer enemies than the tall boy; because he was generous to a fault, humorous in his remarks, and the life of the camp when out with any of his companions.
Andy had stalked back into the shop again, though Frank had looked after him as though inclined to wonder what ailed his cousin to be so mysterious in his actions.
"Forgot to take his change out of the pockets of those wet clothes?" suggested Larry, noticing the upraised eyebrows of Frank.