Page:Barbour--Captain Chub.djvu/205

Rh hungry and somewhat tired, and Roy almost walked into the stick in the road before he saw the piece of paper. When he had read it he laughed and handed it to Dick.

Stung! read Dick. He grinned, crumpled it up, and tossed it aside, and they went on for a moment without a word. Then,

“You have to get up pretty early to get ahead of Chub,” said Roy, admiringly.

“Get up early!” quoth Dick. “You have to stay up all night!”

They trudged on home to the camp and dinner.

Meanwhile Chub was having hard luck. Fully a mile away, where a stream rushed down a hill and paused for a while in a broad black pool lined with rocks and alders, he had been fishing diligently for over an hour with no success. He had tried almost every one of his brand-new assortment of flies, but, to use his own expression, he hadn’t even got a bid. It was getting along toward dinner-time, as his hunger emphatically informed him, and he recollected his agreement with regret. It wasn’t that he so much disliked to wash the dishes for once—although as a matter of principle he always schemed to avoid that