The big, broad-shouldered boy with the red hair and rollicking blue eyes is Dan Speede. Dan, who hails from New York, is fifteen years old. Whereas Tom spends a good deal of his time getting into trouble himself, Dan is tireless in his efforts to get others into trouble; and he usually succeeds. For the rest, he is fond of fun, afraid of nothing, and hasn’t an ounce of meanness in him. Dan is in his senior year at St. Eustace Academy, and he, too, has his heart set on Erskine College.
The last boy of the four—and the eldest—is Bob Hethington, of Portland, Maine. Bob is sixteen—nearly seventeen—and is big, quiet-appearing, and unexcitable. He has curly black hair and eyes and is distinctly good-looking. Bob, too, is booked for Erskine.
Perhaps you have met these boys before, when, at Camp Chicora, last summer, they gained the title of the Big Four. If so, you are undoubtedly wondering how it happens that we find them on this bright morning in early September [swinging along a country road on Long Island]. Well, it was all Dan’s fault. Dan took it into his head to get sick in early summer. As he had never been sick before to amount to anything, he thought he might as well do the thing right. So he had typhoid fever. That was in June, just after school closed, and he spent the succeeding two months at home. He didn’t have a good time, and even when the doctor declared him well, Dan felt, as he himself expressed it, like a last summer’s straw hat. So there was a family council. Dan’s mother said Dan ought to stay out of school and go abroad. Dan said, “Nonsense.” So the matter was left to the physician. He said what Dan needed was outdoor exercise, plenty of fresh air, and all that.
“Let him get into an old suit of clothes,” said the doctor, “and take a walking trip.” (You see, the doctor was a bit old-fashioned.) “Nothing like walking; sea trips and sanitariums aren’t half as good. He needn’t hurry; just let him wander around country for two or three weeks; that’ll set him up, you see if it doesn’t.”
Dan liked the idea, but the thought of wandering around the country alone didn’t appeal to him. “If I could only get Nelson or Bob or Tommy to go along,” he said.
“Perhaps you can,” said his father.
So three letters were written and dispatched and soon three answers came. Nelson was glad to go, Bob was equally willing, and Tom was “tickled to death.” Bob and Nelson had been at Camp Chicora most of the summer, while Tom had spent his vacation at one of the Michigan lake resorts. The last week in August there was a jolly gathering of the clans at Dan’s house, a happy reunion, and an excited discussion of ways and means. Mr. Speede engineered affairs, and by the fourth day of September all was ready. There had been much discussion as to where they should go. Nelson recommended his own State, Bob thought Pennsylvania about right, and Tom favored the Adirondacks. It was Dan’s father who thought of Long Island.
“In the first place,” he pointed out, “it’s right at our back door, and you won’t have to waste a day in getting there; and as you’ve got only three weeks at the most before school begins, that’s worth considering. Then, too, if anything should happen to you, I could get you here in a few hours. Long Island isn’t the biggest stretch of country in the world, but there’s over a hundred miles of it as to length, and I guess you can keep busy. Besides, the towns are near together and you’ll be able to find good sleeping accommodations; and I’d rather Dan didn’t do too much sleeping out of doors just at first.”
So the map of Long Island was produced and studied, and the more they studied it the better they liked it. It was unknown territory to them all, for even Dan’s knowledge of the place was limited to Coney Island, and the names of places—names which amused Tommy vastly—and the evident abundance of good roads won the day.
“Me for Long Island!” declared Nelson.