Charley's pluck was good, for he not only set his wet clothes a-drying, but went right in again. It was first-rate swimming, and the search for jewels of duck-stones went on at intervals, until a set had been provided which it would have been hard to beat.
"Oh, but won't they pitch!"
"They'll just sit and teter."
"Scare off if they're touched."
The science of it was dawning on the Rockville boys, and when they finally dressed for the back trip, their eyes were all around them for the right kind of a "nest" for those ducks.
Charley McGraw got his wet clothes on, with some difficulty, and the boys started toward home.
The right kind of a setting stone was discovered before they were half way home, and the very weight of it suggested that the river-bank was as good a place as any to try their hew pebbles.
"Besides," said Jake Potter, "it'll give Charley McGraw a chance to dry. Hang your coat on the fence, Putney, and pitch your level best."
Sid Wayne went into the game with as much enthusiasm as anybody, but he found that, for some reason, his duck-stone had more work to do as "duck" than any other geological specimen in that crowd.
"If you spend the summer here," remarked Joe Biddle, "you'll know how to play first-rate by the time you go home."