Vacation had not as yet made any serious inroads on their summer season, and for some little time now Jack and his two best chums had been trying to figure out some scheme that would occupy a couple of weeks, and give them the outing they were hungering for.
All sorts of ideas had cropped up, but thus far nothing seemed to have caught their fancy to such an extent that their enthusiasm ran wild. It was just at this interesting stage of the game that Jack had called to the others over the ’phone, to ask them to drop in at his place that evening after supper, and hinting after a boyish fashion that he might have something “real interesting” to discuss with them.
Familiarity with Jack’s den caused both the visitors to lose no time in seating themselves in favorite seats. Steve threw himself haphazard upon an old but comfortable lounge, tossing his cap at the same time toward a rack on the 4 wall, and chuckling triumphantly when by sheer luck it stuck on a peg.
Toby curled up in the depths of a huge Morris chair that had been discarded as unworthy of a place in the living-room downstairs, and to which in due season Jack had naturally fallen heir.
“Now, we’ve strolled over this evening in response to your call, Jack,” observed Steve, with one of his wide grins, “and full to the brim with expectancy, as well as supper. Suppose you unload and tell us what you’ve struck this time?”
“Yes, spin the yarn, please, Jack, because I’m fairly quivering with suspense, you must know,” urged Toby, with a vein of entreaty in his voice.
Jack laughed. He knew that while the others were trying to appear cool, inwardly both of them were boiling with curiosity and eagerness.
“Well, the conundrum is solved, I reckon,” he went on to say; “that is, if both of you agree with me that this chance is something like a gift dropped from the blue sky. We made up our minds a long time ago that it must be some sort of outing for us this summer, and the only thing that looked dubious was the state of our funds, and they have been drained pretty low, what with buying so many things needed for our sports. Well, that part of it has been settled. A magician bobbed up just when we needed one the worst kind.”
Steve no longer reclined at full length on the lounge; he sat up straight and turned a pair of 5 dancing eyes on the speaker. As for Toby, he actually leaped out of the depths of his chair, and threatened to execute a Fiji Island war-dance on the spot.
“Go on, tell us some more, please,” urged Steve. “Who is this kind gentleman who has taken such an interest in our crowd that he’d actually offer to stand for the expense of our outing?”