Promptly at four o'clock the next morning Tom Bigden opened the front door of the boat-house, and waved his hat in response to a similar signal of greeting which came to him from over the lake. Joe Wayring and his friends were just putting their canoes into the water.
"Splendid day," said the former, when the two little fleets came together near the middle of the lake. "There's going to be just wind enough to ripple the water, but not enough to raise a sea, and I wouldn't take a dollar for my chance of catching the finest string of bass that has been seen in Mount Airy this year."
"So say we all of us," exclaimed Sheldon; and this suggested the song which every school-boy knows, but to Tom Bigden's ill-concealed disgust, it was sung to the words: "Joe Wayring is a jolly good fellow," and that was a sentiment in which Tom did not fully concur. It put him in bad humor for the whole of the day, or, rather, until circumstances threw in his way an opportunity to make that jolly good fellow as miserable as he was himself. After that he felt better.
Under the steady motion of the sinewy arms
