TOM IDEALIZES WORKING CLOTHES
After the reunion at Fenton the high school boys enjoyed many
days of "hiking" and of all-around good times, yet nothing happened
in that interval that requires especial chronicling.
Nor in that time did Dick & Co. hear any more of Reuben Hinman,
as they were now some distance from Fenton.
"We'll make Ashbury to-night," Dick announced one morning. "We'll
go about two miles past the town, halt there for two or three
days' rest, and then---back to good old Gridley for ours."
"Gridley's all right. Fine old town," Tom declared. "But as
for me, I wish we didn't have to go back there for another two
months, instead of feeling that we have to be there in a fortnight
from now."
"This has been a great hike," Dick agreed, "and a fortnight of
life of a kind that has had nothing but joy in it. Yet we've
the years ahead to think of, haven't we?"
"What has that got to do with going back to Gridley?" demanded
Danny Grin.
"Well, what are we going to the high school for?" questioned Dick
Prescott.
"I'm going because the folks send me," Dan declared. "Can't help
myself."
"Don't you want to get anywhere in life?"
"I suppose I do," Dalzell assented half dubiously.
"Danny boy, I'm ashamed of you," Dick exclaimed, though his eyes
were smiling. "Are you content, Dan, to grow up and use your
fine muscles in performing the duties of a day laborer?"
"Not exactly," Dan answered.
"You'd rather be president of a big railroad company?"
"Yes, if I had to choose between the two jobs."
"Then perhaps you can get a glimmering of why you're in high school,"
Dick went on. "When you compare the railway president and the
laborer, the difference between them lies a good deal in the difference
in their natural abilities. Yet a lot depends, too, upon the
difference in their training. You don't find many college graduates
wielding the pick and shovel for a living, nor many high school
graduates doing so, either. By the way, Dan, what are you going
to do in life?"
Dalzell shook his head.
"Then within the next year you had better go after the problem
and make your decision hard and fast. Fasten your gaze on something
in life that you want, and then don't stop traveling until you
get it, and it's all yours! A boy of seventeen, without an idea
of what he intends to do in life has already turned down the lane
that leads to the junk heap. Get out of that road, Danny!"
"What are you going to do in life yourself?" challenged Danny Grin.
"I'm going to West Point if there's any possible chance of my
winning the nomination from our home district. There's a vacancy
to be competed for next spring."
"Some smarter boy may win it away from you," Danny Grin retorted.
"He'll have to hustle, then," Dick rejoined, his eyes flashing.
"But suppose you do lose the nomination and can't go to West
Point---what will you do then?"
"I have plans, in case I can't get to West Point," Prescott answered
quietly. "However, as yet I won't admit the defeat of my West
Point ambition."
"I'd try for West Point myself, if it weren't for Dick being in
the way," Greg declared. "But I never could get past Dick in
an exam."
"If you want it, come on and try," begged Dick. "Our Congressman
gives the nomination to the boy in the district who can stand
up best under an exam. Go in and try for it, Greg! Work like
a horse when high school opens. You might get it."
"And take it away from you?" blurted Holmes.
"If you can get it from me, you ought to do it, Holmesy. The
best men are needed in every walk of life. I'll promise, in
advance, not to be 'sore' if you can win it away from me."
"Yes! I'd try all winter," scoffed Greg, "and then in the end
some sad-eyed fellow from a back-country village would bob up
and win it away from us both."
"Let the sad-eyed fellow have it, if he is the better man," Dick
agreed heartily. "But fear of defeat isn't going to hold me back.
Don't let it stop you, either, Greg!"
"It's going to be Annapolis for mine---the United States Naval
Academy and a commission in the United States Navy!" Darry declared,
his eyes snapping.
"I'd rather like that, too," Danny Grin declared.
"Then go after it," urged Dick Prescott. "Get some real plan
in your mind of what you're going to do in life, and then follow
that plan, night and day, until you either win or drop from exhaustion."
"Wouldn't I be a funny-looking lamb in a midshipman's uniform?"
queried Dalzell blinking fast.
"No funnier looking than any of the rest of us," Dick retorted.
"Now, Tom isn't talking much, but we all know what he's going
to do, for he has already been working at it. He has been studying
surveying, for he means to make a great civil engineer of himself
one of these days."
"And I'm going into the game with him," declared Hazelton.
"That's because you've always had Tom about to tell you what to
do, and to keep you from butting your head into things in the
dark," jeered Danny Grin. "Hazy, you're going to become an engineer
just because you shiver at the thought of trying to do anything
in life without having old Tommy Long-legs to advise you when
to wash your face or come in out of the rain."
"Harry is a pretty bright surveyor already," Tom declared. "He
has been keeping mum about it, but Harry can go out into the country
with a transit and run up the field notes for a map about as handily
as the next kid in his teens."
"I should think you'd like the Army or the Navy, Tom," mused Dalzell
aloud.
"Nothing doing," Reade retorted. "I want to be one of the big
and active men of the world, who do big things. I want to map
out the wilderness. I want to dam the raging flood and drive
the new railroad across the desert. I want to construct. I want
to work day and night when the big deeds are to be done. That's
why I wouldn't care for the Army or Navy; it's too idle a life."
"An idle life!" exclaimed Dick and Dave in the same breath.
"Yes," Tom went on dryly. "Did you ever see an Army or a Navy
officer?"
"I've seen several of them," Dick replied, "and have talked with
some of them."
"Same here," added Darrin.
"Did you see the officers in uniform?" Reade pressed.
"Yes, of course-----" said Prescott.
"Their uniforms were nice and neat, weren't they?" Tom asked.
"Of course," Prescott answered.
"Then that was because your Army or Navy officers hadn't been
doing any hard work that would ruffle the neatness of their uniforms,"
finished Tom triumphantly, "and there you are! I can dress up
on Sundays or holidays, but on the work days, when I'm a civil
engineer, I want to wear clothes that show that I'm not afraid
to tackle the rough and hard things of life."
"Then you might join Dan in being a day laborer," teased Dick
laughingly.
"Oh, no! I want to use my brain along with my muscles, and that's
why I'm going to be a civil engineer."
"Army a Navy officers may have had an easy time of it once," Dave
went on warmly, but times have changed. Our fighting men, to-day,
are obliged to hustle all the time to keep up with the march and
progress of science. I asked an Army officer, once, what he did
in his spare time. He looked at me rather queerly, then replied,
'I sleep.'"
"He was lazy as well as offensively neat, then," laughed Tom.
"As for me, I enjoy my old clothes, and that is one of the reasons
why I'm having so much fun out of this trip. I don't have to
dress up!"
"You'd feel first rate if you could be dressed up for a few hours,
go into a hotel dining room, have a good meal and then slip into
a ballroom for a dance," laughed Prescott.
"Bosh!" flared Tom. "I'm no dandy, and all I want is to be a
man."
"How do you stand, Harry?" grinned Dave Darrin. "Do you agree
with Tom that dirt is the best stuff with which to decorate one's
clothing?"
"I never said that," broke in Tom hotly. "I'm as ready for a
bath and clean clothing as any of you. I like to wear old
clothes---not soiled ones!"
"If anyone happens to overhear us talking," laughed Hazy, "he'll
think that we're all planning to take up prize fighting as our
work in life."
"I don't like to hear the officers of the Army and Navy scoffed
at as a lot of idling, time-wasting dandies," Darry asserted.
"And I don't like to be accused of liking dirt on my clothes,
just because I am going to be a civil engineer," Tom explained
in a milder voice.
An ideal bit of green forest, at the edge of a limpid lake, appealed
to Dick & Co. as the noon stopping place.
"I've a good mind to fish," remarked Danny Grin.
"Go ahead, if you want to," Dick assented, "but we've got a lot
of fresh meat that we simply must cook this noon, for it may not
keep until night."
"It would take you an hour or more, even though the fish bit readily,
to catch enough fish to feed this little multitude," Tom remarked.
"I don't want to wait that long for my meal to-day."
"I don't believe I want to wait, either," Dalzell agreed, and
gave up the idea of fishing.
Luncheon went on in record time that morning. It was not later
than half-past eleven o'clock when they sat down to the meal,
and but a few minutes past noon when the dishes were stacked up,
ready to be washed.
"Whizz-zz!" whistled Dave, as the sounds made by a swiftly driven
automobile reached their ears. "Someone is hurrying to get his
noon meal. Just hear that old spurt wagon throb!"
The boys sat some hundred feet in from the highway. The automobile
did not interest them much until-----
Bang!
Then the car stopped with a scraping sound.
"Gracious!" exclaimed Danny Grin, jumping up at the sound of the
explosion. Then he sat down once more, looking sheepish.
"Give up the Annapolis bee, Danny boy," laughed Tom. "That was
nothing but a tire blowing out. If you got into the Navy, and
a fourteen-inch gun went off when you weren't expecting it, you'd
be half way to the planet Neptune before your comrades could call
you back."
"How easily we make light of other people's troubles," mused Prescott.
"What makes you say that?" asked Darrin.
"Why, for instance, that party down in the road has been stopped
by a blown-out tire. Probably they were in a hurry to get somewhere,
too. Now, they're delayed perhaps a half an hour, but it doesn't
give us a flicker of concern."
"It interests me, anyway," Reade announced, rising. "Anything
in the mechanical line does. It may even be that the man driving
that car doesn't know just how to put on a new tire. I'm going
to saunter down and see."
Five members of Dick & Co. didn't take the trouble even to glance
keenly at the halted car.
Tom took a dozen steps, then suddenly shouted back:
"Fellows, your indifference will vanish, now. Look who's here!"