“And you’ll be taking one in a hospital if you don’t behave yourself,” Bob growled hurling the pillow back.
As soon as breakfast was over they started down the lake, in one of the canoes belonging to the camp, towing the borrowed one after him. It was a beautiful morning with the slightest hint of coolness in the clear spruce laden air and they had not gone a mile before Jack proposed that he get into the other canoe and that they have a race for the dam.
“How much handicap do you want?” Bob asked.
“Not a foot.”
“But—”
“No buts about it. I’ll beat you even.”
But Jack knew that he was talking, as Bob would say, “through his hat,” but he would accept no favors.
“Dig in and do your best,” he shouted a while later after they had covered about half the distance. “There’s no friendship in this race.”
“All right, if you feel that way about it,” Bob laughed and almost immediately he began to forge ahead.
Jack exerted himself to the utmost but, although he was fully as skillful as his brother in the use of the paddle he lacked considerable when it came to a matter of strength. So he was not disappointed when Bob reached the dam nearly a quarter of a mile ahead. As he came out on the dam he found Bob talking with a man about forty years old.