They were ready, bait and all, thanks to Dick; and the breakfast had been an early one. Dab thanked Mrs. Myers for that, even while he wished he had Ford Foster's tongue to do it with.
In fact, he had been noticing of late that his ideas came to him a little slowly. Not but what he had plenty of them, but they seemed disposed to crowd one another; so that whenever there was any thing to be said in a hurry, Ford was sure to get ahead of him, and sometimes even quiet Frank Harley.
"Must be I'm growing, somehow," he said to himself, "or I wouldn't be so awkward."
The north road from Grantley led through a region that was, as the old farmers said of it, "a-goin' back," and was less thickly peopled than it had been two or three generations before. There had once been pretty well cultivated farms all around some of the little lakes that were now bordered by stout growths of forest; and the roads among the hills wore a neglected look, many of them, as if it had ceased to profit anybody to keep them in order.
There was "coming and going" over them, nevertheless; and the boys managed to get a "lift" of nearly five miles in a farmer's wagon, so that they reached the vicinity of Green Pond sooner than they had expected, and with much less fatigue. The same farmer, in response to anxious questioning by Dab, informed him,—
"Fish? Wall, ye-es. Nobody don't ketch 'em much nowadays. Time was when they was pretty much all fished out, but I heerd there was some fellers turned in a heap of seedlin' fish three or four year ago. Right away arter that, my boys went over, and put in three days a hand runnin', but they didn't get nothin' but pumpkin-seeds. Plenty of them yit, I s'pose."
That was encouraging; but Ford at once remarked,—
"Pumpkin-seeds? A fine-looking fish, are they not? I know them. Somewhat depressed, and extended laterally?"
"Guesso. You're 'tendin' school at the 'cadummy, ain't ye?"
"Yes, we're there."