Whistling to the dogs, they turned about.
"What a pile you know about all this," Dick presently observed.
"Shucks! No, I don't," blushed His Highness. "I am only repeating what Bob spieled off to me. He likes to talk when he's home and I like to listen. It's interesting—at least I think so. Besides, I'm proud of Bob knowing such a lot. I wish I did."
The lad dug his heel into the moist sand and watched the hole fill with water.
"Somehow I'm an awful boob at books," he suddenly confessed. "I hate so to study that Ma fairly has to haul me along by the hair or I'd never go to school. I barely skinned through this year. Up to the very last minute we all had cold chills for fear I wouldn't."
Dick shot the offender a sympathetic glance.
"I don't like reading about things myself so well as doing them," he confided. "I'm crazy about machinery. It's fun to tinker with it—take it to pieces and put it together again. I like nothing better than to overhaul an engine."
He held up two grease-stained hands.
"It horrifies my mother," he continued, "but my father doesn't seem to mind if I am all black with oil from my car or the motor boats. What I want now is a wireless outfit. I'm going to strike Dad for one my birthday. It comes the last of this month and he might as well give me that as anything else. Do you suppose if he got it we could rig it up together?"
Walter's eyes opened at the casualness of the observation.