“Gee! I’d like to know what’s in those letters.” Frank gazed at them longingly as they walked along. “Look at the fatness of that, will you?”
“I’ve got a fatness myself,” retorted Kenneth, holding a thick letter bearing several stamps. “We have just about time enough to buy some truck and get back. What do you say to some oysters?”
“That goes,” was Frank’s hearty endorsement.
Oysters were cheap, they found, so they bought a goodly supply, and for want of a better carrier put them in a stout paper bag.
The two boys started out bravely, with the bag of oysters between them, each carrying a bundle of papers and mail under their arms. They saw many things that interested them—quaint old buildings with balconies and twisted ironwork, and numbers of picturesque, dark-skinned people wearing bright colors wherever it was possible.
Frank and Kenneth were so interested in watching what was going on about them—the people, the buildings, and all the hundred and one things that would interest a Northern boy in a Southern city—that they forgot all about the load of oysters till they noticed that the people who met and passed them were smiling broadly.
“Have I got a smudge on my nose, Frank?” asked Kenneth, trying vainly to squint down that member.
“No. Have I?” Frank’s answer and question came in the same breath.
“Well, what in thunder are these people grin——”
There was a soft tearing sound, and then a hollow rattle. The boys looked down quickly and saw that the damp oysters had softened the paper so that the bag no longer held them, and they were falling, leaving a generous trail behind them.