but this path across the pasture was a short-cut.
"If we see that Applethwaite Plunkit and his dog, what are we going to do?" asked Fred, as they trotted along the sidehill path, white with road dust from head to foot.
"Nothing. But if he sees us, that's another matter," chuckled Bobby.
"All right. You're the smart one. But what will we do?"
"Run, if he isn't too near," said Bobby, practically.
"And suppose he is too near?"
"Guess we'll have to run just the same," returned Bobby, thoughtfully. "He can lick either of us, Fred. And with the dog he can lick us both at once. That dog is real savage. He's made him so, Ap Plunkit has."
"I bet we could pitch on Ap and fix him," said the combative Fred.
"Now, you just keep out of trouble if you can, Fred Martin," advised Bobby, cautiously. "You know – if you get into a fight, you'll catch it when you get home. Your father will be sure to hear of it."
"Well! what am I going to do if they pitch on me?" demanded Fred.
"'Turn the other cheek,'" chuckled Bobby, "like Miss Rainey, our Sunday-school teacher, says."
"Huh! that's all right. A fellow's got two cheeks; but if you get a punch in the nose, you can't turn your other nose – you haven't one! So now!" declared the very literal and pugnacious Fred.
Just then they came close enough to the creek to see the willows along the hank. At the corner of the Plunkit fence there stood a big apple tree – a "summer sweetnin'" as the country folk called it.
"Scubbity-yow!" ejaculated Fred Martin. "See those apples? And they're yellow!"
"Some of them are," admitted his chum.
"More'n half of them, I declare. Say! we're going to have a feast, Bob. Come on!"
Bobby grabbed him by the sleeve. "Hold on! don't go so fast, Fred," exclaimed the brown-eyed boy. "Those apples aren't ours."
"But they're going to be," returned Fred, grinning.
"Now, you don't mean that," said Bobby, seriously. "You know you mustn't climb that tree, or pick apples on this side of the fence. Here's where we crawl through. Now! lots of the limbs overhang this other side of the fence – and there's a lot of ripe apples on the ground."
"Pshaw! the Plunkits would never know," complained Fred. But he followed Bobby through the break in the pasture fence, just the same.
Bobby was just as much fun as any boy in Clinton; Fred knew that. Yet Bobby was forever "seeing consequences." He kept them both out of trouble very often by seeing ahead. Whereas Fred, left to himself, never would stop to think at all!
They had come two miles and a half. Where were there ever two boys who could walk as far as that without "walking up an appetite"?
"My goodness me, Fred!" exclaimed Bobby, as they came to the clear-water creek in which the pebbles and sand were plainly visible on the bottom. "My goodness me, Fred! aren't you dreadfully hungry?"
"I could eat the label off this tomato can – just like a goat!" declared Fred, shaking the can which held the fishworms before his chum's face and eyes.
"Then let's eat before we bait a hook," suggested Bobby. "I don't care if Meena does have the toothache. She makes de-lic-ious sandwiches."
"Scubbity-yow! I should say she did," agreed Fred, sitting down cross-legged on the grass under a spreading oak that here broke the hedge of willows bordering the stream.
The boys soon had their mouths full. It was not yet noon, but the sun was high in the heavens, and it twinkled down at them between the interlacing leaves and twigs of the oak. A little breeze played with the blades of grass. A thrush sang his heart out, swinging on a cane across the stream. A locust whirred like a policeman's rattle in a tall poplar a little way down the creek. In the distance a crow cawed lazily as he winged his way across a field, early plowed for grain.
"This is a fine place," said Bobby. "I just love the country."
"This is the way it is at Rockledge," declared Fred, proudly.
"How do you know? You've never been there."
"But Sam Tillinghast, who comes to see us once in a while, went to Rockledge before he went to college. He says Rockledge is right up on a bluff overlooking Monatook Lake, and that a fellow can have more fun there than a box of monkeys!"
"I never had a box of monkeys," said Bobby, grinning, and with his mouth full.
"That's all right. I wish you were going," said Fred, wagging his head. "Don't you suppose that's what's the matter at your house – what your pa and your mother are thinking about?"
"No," said Bobby, wagging his head, sadly. "I guess it ain't nothing as good as going to boarding school. You see, they look so solemn when I catch them staring at me."
"Maybe you've done something and they are thinking of punishing you?" suggested Fred.
"No. I haven't done a thing. I really haven't! I'd thought of that, and I just went back over everything I've done this vacation, and I can't think of a thing," decided Bobby, reflectively.
"Well, if it's something bad, you'll find out soon enough what it is," said Fred, playing a regular Job's comforter.
"And if it is something good, I suppose they'll worry me to death – or pretty near – too, eh!"
"Mebbe if we could find a Gypsy woman she'd tell your fortune and you'd know," said Fred.
"Yah! I don't believe in such stuff," declared Bobby. "You remember that old woman that came around selling baskets last spring and wheedled that ten cents out of you? She only told you that you were going to cross water and have a great change on the other side."
"Well, she knew!" exclaimed Fred, earnestly. "Didn't I fall into the canal the very next day and have to swim across it; and you brought me a change of clothing from home? Huh! I guess that old woman hit it about right," declared the red-haired boy, with conviction.
Bobby chuckled a long time over this. It amused him a great deal. He and his chum had eaten up nearly the whole of Meena's luncheon – and she had not been niggardly with it, either.
"I'm going to have some of those apples," declared Fred. "Come on."
"All right," agreed Bobby, who had no compunctions about taking the apples on this side of the fence. He believed that the Plunkits had no claim upon the fruit that overhung somebody else's land! That is the usual belief of small boys in the country, whether it is legally correct, or not.
When the chums bit into the yellow apples on the ground they found that almost every one had been seized by a prior claimant. Fred bit right through a soft, white worm!
"Oh! oh! oh!" exclaimed the red-haired boy, and ran down to the creek's edge to rinse his mouth. "Isn't that awful?"
"Don't bite blindly," advised Bobby, chuckling. "You were too eager."
"I'm going to have a decent apple," declared Fred, coming back.
He jumped up, seized one of
