“Nothing of the kind in sight, and I always look up every scrap of weather news in the papers.”
“You make me happy when you say that, Arthur, old weather sharp. We get our afternoons off from school while the County Fair is on, because it’s such a big thing for Oakvale and vicinity. I’m trying to figure out what I can do to have a cracking good time of it.”
“So are we all, Tom, but there’s no use trying to hike off somewhere with the whole troop. You can’t do much on an afternoon. Why couldn’t they have fixed it so we would get free the last half of the week, including Saturday?”
“Tell that to the school directors, Alec. Perhaps they’ll take pity on you and change the programme. I doubt it, though. I reckon they want the boys to be around while the Fair is going on.”
“I’ve figured out that my scheme is to hang around the Exhibition and see the aëroplane man do his stunts every afternoon; but I’d rather be in camp any day.”
The three boys whose chatter opens this chapter had been tramping along the main road leading into the town of Oakvale, where they all lived. It was on a Saturday afternoon in early fall. That the lads had been spending part of their holiday in fishing was in plain evidence, for besides carrying either bamboo poles or jointed rods, they dangled strings of yellow perch, some of the catch being of extraordinary size.
On their way home the boys had stopped to scan a highly-colored poster on a billboard at the side of the road, where people in the passing trains nearby could also have the benefit of the information thus blazoned forth.
About this time every year the big County Fair was held on the extensive grounds near the thriving town of Oakvale. If wonderful promises meant anything at all the coming exhibition of live stock, farm products, and the like would far surpass anything heretofore attempted.
Besides, there would be racing on the track, amazing feats undertaken by an aëroplane aviator of national renown, balloon ascensions accompanied by parachute drops, “and other attractions too numerous to mention.”
Having looked over the poster and commented on its most prominent features, the trio of weary lads again turned their faces toward home, now not half a mile away.