Page:Stringer - Lonely O'Malley.djvu/292

 a compact which was duly sworn to and elaborately signed for, in blood, along with sundry other items also duly laid down with equally impressive ceremonies.

There was no time to be lost, they felt, for those halcyon days, the summer holidays, were already at hand. It was the season of blue skies and warm evenings and strange unrests, the season of lazy afternoons and disturbing dreams of far-off things, the season when a passion for water and roving is born, when the world is big and wonderful and echoing with alluring voices, when the touch of shoe-leather is an abomination to the foot, and a garden-hoe is a sordid emblem of slavery. It was the time when the fat old constable grew more watchful and wary, when river-booms were unchained, and orchards were ravaged, and when young vagabonds, not two years out of skirts, rebelled against the cruel bondage of home life, and were apt to make for the woods to be Indians.

But with the purchase of the Maggie Watson—there, it slipped out before I could stop it!—with the purchase of the Greyhound, all of these trivial things were forgotten, and