I don’t know that I wholly agree with him in this, but I think I catch his idea, which is sound and wholesome. At all events, we must take him as we find him.
He was inordinately fond of boating, and had walked away with the seamanship badge so easily that it seemed a shame for him to take it. He gave the examiners good measure in all the tests and threw in several feats gratis. He could ride a canoe as a cowboy rides a mustang, and had come alone in one of those little shells from Block Island to New York, straight through Long Island Sound, in November.
He was thoughtful and far-sighted, and studious in regard to matters that interested him specially. In his seamanship test he had voluntarily drawn a plan of a turbine engine, giving also a description of its advantages in sea navigation. What he knew, he knew thoroughly, and the thing that interested him most, next to wood lore and outdoor life and boating, was Gordon Lord.
That loquacious Beaver, with his head stuffed full of a variety of useful and semi-useful information, furnished him a source of never ending amusement which had blossomed into a genuine attachment for the younger boy. “Kid,” he would say, “the inside of your head reminds me of a rummage sale or an old attic. Why don’t you get busy and clear it out some rainy Saturday?”
And Gordon would answer, “Because then I wouldn’t have anything to make you laugh with when you get a grouch on. See?” And this, perhaps, may afford a hint as to why the two had been drawn together.
It now became the first duty of Harry Arnold to encounter his young friend’s father and surmount, if might be, the difficulty of parental objection to the proposed undertaking. This he could not do until evening, but he knew enough to know that he was going to talk to a business man and that it behooved him to be prepared. Of his own father’s consent he had no doubt.
Mr. Lord had a great admiration for Harry. His shrewd business habit of keen observation had long since shown him that here was a boy who was adventurous but not visionary. He admired the lad’s straightforward, self-possessed way of talking. He had even been favorably impressed with the moderate and discriminate use of slang which characterized his conversation.
“Just enough to make what he says pithy and vivid,” he told Gordon. “You never hear him use senseless expressions or words that have no meaning—I like to talk to him.” In short, he was well pleased with the intimacy between the two boys, for he felt that Harry was an admirable companion for his own impulsive son.
Harry started at once for the city, where he procured from a sporting outfitter just what he wanted and no more, which is not always an easy thing to do. This was a government survey map of the Lake Champlain country. If there had been time he might have gotten this from Uncle Sam at the moderate price of five cents; as it was, it cost him a dollar.
The afternoon he spent in his room alone, studying the map. Gordon’s alluring picture of dropping in on the troop unexpectedly some fine day did not divert him from a calm and thoughtful consideration of the chances of success or failure. Of course, the idea of going up there and searching them out by the application of wit, persistence, and resource appealed strongly to his spirit of adventure. But he was not going to allow himself to be too hopeful. He saw that if they started at Ticonderoga and journeyed north in a direct line they would be, generally speaking, on high ground, whence they could keep the lake in view as well as the two miles, approximately, which would intervene between themselves and the water.