"Well; and Bill he can stand there and watch the old one till somebody comes along and knocks it off."
Bill had heard it all, in spite of his eager watching, and he had been by that "nest" about as long as he cared to. So at that moment one of his feet went straight for his despised "duck," and he came forward on a run, and joined the rest of the boys.
"No you don't. I'm out of that. Let's get some ducks that won't stick as if they were setting hens. I know a place, just above the old hole."
Every boy of them seemed to "know a place," somewhere down that way, supplied with pebbles of marvellously perfect finish. It looked for all the world as if they had studied the question all up before they heard any news from Putney.
It did not take a very long walk to bring them from the vacant lot where they had been playing, back of Snider's grocery, down to the bank of the creek, and it was only a quarter of a crooked mile to the swimming hole.
The "creek" was a shallow stream where it was wide, and deep only where the banks rose a little and squeezed it narrow, so that all you had to do, for ordinary wading, was to roll up your trousers as far as they would go; that is, for any boy over twelve who was not small for his age. Any boy big enough to pitch a two-pound duck-stone for thirty feet could wade for one in that creek almost anywhere. Very small boys would have to keep near shore, and do their pitching with pebbles suited to their own size.
"We use the biggest kind over in Putney," said Charley McGraw.
There was fun in wading, but under the rigid inspection of the self-appointed teacher of the great game of duck the best pebbles of that creek bottom were fished out only to be despised and thrown away.
"I've got one," shouted Sid Wayne, as he lifted a dripping arm just high enough to let the water trickle down toward his neck, under his rolled-up sleeve.
"That!" said Charley. "Well, now, that'll almost do. Some of our fellows'd take that, if they couldn't find anything better."