“Meanwhile,” remarked his cousin, with a smile, “we can makeshift to get along at our work with the big monkey wrench. After all, it isn’t the tools that really count, but the ability to do things when you’re left high and dry. Hello! Going to leave us, fellows?” as Elephant and Larry stopped at a cross roads.
“I promised to do a job in our yard today, and it’s going to take me the rest of the time to get through,” announced Larry, with a shrug of his shoulders.
“And me to the woodpile for a little more muscle. So-long, boys; and don’t you believe that old bald-headed thief of the air didn’t understand how you meant to snatch his honors away from him. Look to his nest up on Thunder Top for your monkey wrench, Andy.” And Elephant solemnly shook his head as he walked slowly away.
“What shall we do now, Frank?” asked Andy, when they found themselves alone. “Had we better go and tackle a little more work on our machine, while we wait for that cylinder to arrive?”
“You know we can do mighty little now until we install that. And I’ve somehow got a hunch it’s about due to arrive. So what say we meander down to the station and find out?” suggested the other.
“A bully idea; so come along!” declared Andy, usually only too willing to play second fiddle when in the company of his energetic cousin.
Both were healthy looking boys. Frank’s father was the leading doctor in the town of Bloomsbury, which fronted on Sunrise Lake, a sheet of water some seventeen miles in length, and with innumerable coves along its crooked shores.
Because the boy’s mother had died in his infancy with a suddenly developed lung trouble, the worthy doctor had always been unusually solicitous about Frank; and urged upon him the necessity for securing all the outdoor life he could. Nobody else dreamed that Frank looked delicate; but his father saw suspicious signs in every little “bark” he gave utterance to.
The result was that just now Frank was to be kept out of school for a whole year. His father, being a self-made man, had always believed that an education could be more practically attained from observation and travel than by study of books.
Andy, on the other hand, was an orphan. His father had been quite a well known man of science, and a professor in college. Having a leaning toward aeronautics, he finally took up the fascinating pursuit, after his wife died. A year before the time when we make the acquaintance of the boys, he had vanished utterly from the sight of mortal man, having been carried away in a severe gale while in a balloon, crossing over the line of the partly finished Panama canal.