The boys looked at each other.
"Sounds like a real good test, Frank!" suggested Larry, cautiously.
"Just what I was going to say," Elephant put in, watching Frank's face, and seeing what he considered favorable signs there.
"And I move for one that the challenge be immediately accepted, so that further arrangements may be made!" Andy observed, grimly.
"Well," remarked Frank, slowly; "we'll consider it. As a rule, you know, fellows, I'm not much in favor of racing, when there's so much danger involved, but just as I said a bit ago, Percy knows how to fix things so as to stick pins in you. He's written his challenge in a way that makes us accept, or be branded for cowards."
"Oh, he needn't have worried about that!" cried Andy, angrily. "If he knows anything about the Bird boys he ought to make sure they never take water. Didn't we see whatever he did before, and go him one better? And down in the land of revolution he knows who carried off the honors, as well as saved him from those men who had him in their power. Frank, we've just got to do it!"
"I suppose so, Andy," returned his cousin; "but if you think that another win on our part is going to close Percy up like a clam you're away off. He makes me think of a medicine ball—every time you hit it and send it flying, it comes back again as chipper as ever. He just won't stay down, that's all."
"I don't agree with you there," said Andy. "If we can only rub it into him hard enough, Percy will never have the nerve to hold up his head again in Bloomsbury."
"But we can't expect to do that, you know," Frank went on. "He seems to have a splendid machine there, that will make us hustle all we know how to pass ahead. And even you give the fellow credit for knowing his business. He's a bird boy all right, even if his name happens to be Carberry. No overconfidence, Andy. That's lost any number of races that ought to have been won, hands down."
"Oh! I understand that, Frank," the other said; "but I believe in you, and that Perc ain't in the same class. Count on him to make a mistake when the crisis comes. And if he thinks he's going to be passed there ain't any low down trick he wouldn't be guilty of. I leave it to Larry, Nat and Elephant if that isn't right."