While the quartette of boys were thus engaged an automobile came into view from down the road. It approached swiftly, and Wiley Moyle suddenly recognized it.
“See who has come!” he scoffed. “Here’s Burton Poole’s buzz-wagon with Captain Chance at the wheel. Chance is going to win the gold cup, he says, and he and Poole are in partnership with that old lumber wagon.”
Chanceford Avery, who was considerable older than most of the club members, was a dark complexioned, sharp featured young man, not much liked by the boys of Riverdale, but who made himself agreeable to most of the girl members of the Outing Club.
Some months before he had shown his enmity to the Speedwells, and he never let an opportunity escape for being unpleasant to the brothers. When he saw what the boys were about beside the road, he brought the automobile to an abrupt halt.
“Haven’t you got a cheek to dig that bank up in that manner, Speedwell?” he said. “You’ll get into trouble.”
“Guess not,” returned Dan, cheerfully. “It never entered my head we’d have to get a permit to set a post down here, as long as we are going to take the post right up again and fill in the hole. I’ve saved the sod whole, too.”
“At any rate, there’s one thing sure,” snapped Billy, who didn’t like young Avery at all, any more than he did Francis Avery, Chanceford’s brother, and the superintendent of the Darringford shops; “we haven’t got to come to you for a permit.”
“Aw, stop your rowing, you fellows,” advised Burton Poole, who was a good-natured, easy-going chap. “What are you going to do, Dan?”
Dan explained briefly, still keeping on with his work.
“You’ll have a fat time trying to get that old hulk of a car up here,” sneered Chance Avery. “And after you get it up, what good is it?”