SOME UP-TO-DATE ADVERTISING.
By the time the buggy drew up alongside Jake, who was too engrossed in
his rooting operations to perceive it, or at any rate to bestow any
attention upon it, Tubby had disclosed his plan to his chums, who hailed
it with shouts of delight. From his pockets the fat boy produced an apple
and a bit of cake. Tubby never traveled far without provisions. "Keeping
in touch with his base of supplies," he called it.
It spoke volumes for his enthusiastic belief in the success of his plan
that he was willing to offer both of these to Jake as soon as he had
alighted from the buggy. Close behind him came Rob and Merritt, the
latter with the horse's hitching rope in his hand.
"Come, pig! pig! pig! Nice Jake!" warbled Tubby in the most dulcet voice
he could assume.
Jake looked up. His small eyes twinkled. Unsuspectingly he sniffed the
air as he perceived a rosy apple temptingly held out toward him.
"It's a shame," laughed Rob, half contritely, "if he hadn't caused a lot
of trouble for a mighty nice girl I wouldn't stand for it."
"Pig! pig! pig!" chortled Tubby persuasively.
"Unk! unk! unk!" grunted Jake, wiggling his tail.
"Wonderful how they understand each other, isn't it?" remarked Merritt
with a grin. But Tubby was too intent on what he had in hand to resent
the gross insult.
Closer and closer shuffled Jake, his greedy little eyes on the apple. All
at once he appeared to make up his mind in a hurry. He made a dart for
the tempting bait.
"Now," yelled Tubby.
Quick as a flash, as soon as he heard the preconcerted signal, Merritt
flung the looped hitching rope about the pig's neck. Jake gave a squeal
and wriggled with might and main, but his ears held the rope from
slipping off.
"Give him the apple to keep him quiet," suggested Merritt, as Jake
squealed at the top of his voice.
Tubby proffered the apple and instantly Jake forgot his troubles in
devouring it. In the meantime Tubby slipped to the wagon and selected a
poster or two and a brush full of paste. Returning, amidst shouts of
laughter from his fellow conspirators, he plentifully "shampooed" Jake
with paste, and then slapped the gaudy yellow bills on till it appeared
as if the astute Jake had enveloped himself in a bright orange overcoat.
"Now cut him loose," ordered Rob, when Tubby, with all the satisfaction
of a true artist, stepped back to view his completed work.
Merritt slipped the noose, and off down the road toward the farm dashed
the gaudily decorated Jake, conveying the news to all who might see that
on Saturday, April --, there would be a Grand Baseball Game at Hampton,
Boy Scouts of The Eagle Patrol _vs._ The Hampton Town Nine.
As the boys, shouting and shaking with laughter, watched this truly
original bit of advertising gallop off down the road, the one touch
needed to complete the picture was filled in. From his dooryard emerged
the farmer. The first thing his eyes lighted on was Jake. For one instant
he regarded the alarmed animal in wonderment. Then, with a yell, he
rushed into the house.
"Ma! ma! Lucindy!" he bellowed at the top of his voice, "Jake's got the
yaller fever, er the jaunders, er suthin'. Come on quick! He's comin'
down ther road like ther Empire State Express, and as yaller as a bit of
corn bread."
At this stage of the proceedings the boys, their sides shaking with
laughter, deemed it prudent to emulate the Arabs of the poem and
"silently steal away."
Looking back as they drove off they could see Lucindy and her spouse
engaged in a mad chase after the overcoated Jake. Even at that distance
the latter's piercing cries reached their ears with sharp distinctness
and added to their merriment. Rob alone seemed a bit remorseful at the
huge success of Tubby's novel advertising scheme.
"Applegate's a pretty old man, fellows," he remarked, "and maybe we went
a bit too far."
"Well, if his age runs in proportion to his meanness, he'll outlive
Methuselah," declared Merritt positively.
The road they followed gradually led into a by-track that joined the main
road they had left with one that traversed the north side of the island.
It was sandy, and at places along its course high banks towered on each
side of it. At length they emerged from one of these sunken lanes and
found on their right an abandoned farm. Quite close to the roadside stood
a big, rattletrap-looking barn. It had once been painted red, but neglect
and the weather had caused the paint to shale off in huge patches,
leaving blotches of bare wood that looked leprous with moss and lichen.
"What do you say if we leave a few souvenirs pasted up there?" said
Merritt.
"Well, it wouldn't hurt the looks of the place, anyhow," decided Rob. "I
doubt if many people come along this road anyway; but I guess we might as
well get busy."
"Well, you two fellows can do the work this time," declared Tubby,
stretching out luxuriously in the rig.
"What are you going to do?"
"I'm going to drive down the road and hitch up in the shade of that tree
and take a nap."
"That's pretty cool!" exclaimed Merritt.
"I know it is, at least it looks so," responded Tubby.
"Seems to me it's up to you to do some work, too," protested Merritt.
"As if I hadn't just done a big job in labeling that pig," replied Tubby,
yawning; "it's your turn now."
Seeing that it was useless to try to turn Tubby from his determination to
rest, which, next to eating, was his favorite occupation, Rob and Merritt
took up their brushes, paste and a roll of bills and set out for the
barn. Tubby watched them languidly a minute and then drove off along the
sandy track while the other two clambered up a bank.
From the road the barn had appeared quite close; but when they reached
the top of the bank they found that, actually, it stood back quite a
little distance beyond a strip of grass and weeds. The boys waded through
these almost knee-deep, and finally reached the side of the old barn.
They set down their buckets and brushes and unrolled some bills
preparatory to pasting them up.
Suddenly Merritt raised a warning finger. Rob instantly divined that his
chum enjoined silence.
"Hark!" was the word that Merritt's lips framed rather than spoke.
Inside the barn some one was talking,--several persons seemingly. After a
minute the boys could distinguish words above the low hum of the
speakers' voices. Suddenly they caught a name: "Mainwaring."
"I guess maybe we might be interested in this," whispered Rob.
By a common impulse the two Boy Scouts moved closer to the moldering wall
of the old barn.