Frank laughed.
“Well, you do like to rush things, Jerry,” he remarked. “We couldn’t go off like that on such a long journey. There are heaps and heaps of things to be looked after; clothes to be gathered and examined, for it’ll be pretty cold up there at this time of year; shells to be loaded, other stuff to be bought, and packed, and all that sort of thing. To-morrow we’ll make a start, and it’ll keep us all on the jump even at that to get properly stocked.”
Jerry looked disgusted, and muttered to himself; but his later judgment was likely to be to the effect that Frank knew best.
“Uncle wants you to come in and have a talk with him, first of all,” Will went on. “He’ll give Frank the paper that has to be signed in the presence of three witnesses—ourselves, if there are no others handy. Then he means to put the thing in our hands to do as we please. He was a little anxious about our having to get the consent of our parents; but I told him that if my mother was willing I should go, the rest of you would have no trouble at all.”
“I should say not!” declared Bluff.
“Oh, it’s hard to believe such a chance has come to us just when we have all this time hanging heavy on our hands!” Jerry cried.
Their interview with Will’s bachelor uncle turned out very satisfactorily. Uncle Felix was only too willing to leave everything in the way of details in charge of Frank, whom he knew to be the leader of the chums.
“Never mind the expense, lads,” he told them; “only get that signature for me, and I’ll not count the cost. Besides, you can hardly know the pleasure it gives me to offer you such a fine trip into the Big Woods of Maine. You’ll find them well worth going all that distance to see. It will be a great deal finer than if you were simply heading up into the pine woods of Michigan.”
“That’s what Frank’s been telling us, sir,” declared Jerry. “Perhaps you don’t know Frank’s home used to be in Maine; and that’s where he learned most of what he knows about the big outdoors. He’s often said he only wished we might have a chance to run up there and visit some of the old stamping grounds with him.”
“Well, that’s better than I thought,” Uncle Felix told them; “and when you come back I hope you’ll have some great stories to tell of your adventures in the woods. I only regret that I can’t be one of the party, because all my life I’ve been an advocate of outdoor life.”