“I wouldn’t care to be any stronger than I am,” laughed Danny Grin.  “If I were any stronger folks would be saying that I ought to go to work.”

“You will have to go to work within another year,” Dick laughed, “whatever that work may be.  But you must work with your brain, Danny boy, if you’re to get any real place in life.  Your muscles are intended only as a sign that your body is going to be equal to all the demands that your brain may make on that body.”

“If my mental ability were equal to my physical strength I wouldn’t have to work at all,” grinned Dalzell.

Splash!  His dive carried him under the surface of the water.  Presently he came up, blowing, then swimming with strong strokes.

“Danny boy seems to have the same idea so many people have,” laughed Prescott.  “They think that a man who does all his real work with his brain isn’t working at all, just because he doesn’t get into a perspiration and wilt his collar.”

Splash! splash!  Reade and Darrin were in the water racing upstream.

“I don’t know when I’ve ever found so much happiness in a summer,” asserted Greg, as he poised himself for a dive into the water.

“I wonder if Timmy Hinman ever had the nerve to stick to his father’s wagon long enough to get it back to Fenton,” said Dave, as he swam beside Reade.

“If he ever took that wagon home, I’ll wager that he drove the last few miles late at night, so that his ‘society’ friends wouldn’t have the shock of seeing him drive the peddling outfit that sustains him,” Reade replied.

“I’ll never forget the younger Hinman’s disgusted look when he tried to drive the outfit from our camp, the other morning, with his saddle mount tied behind and balking on the halter,” grinned Darry.

“I wonder why such fellows as Timothy Hinman were ever created,” Tom went on.  “Every time I think about the gentlemanly Timmy I feel as though I wanted to kick something.”

Only the day before, stopping at a postoffice on the route, as had been arranged with Dr. Hewitt, Dick & Co. had received word that the peddler was seriously ill with pneumonia, with all the chances against his recovery.

“If the peddler should die,” suggested Dave soberly, “do you believe that Timmy Hinman will be able to face the thought of going to work for a living?”

“It would be an awful fate,” Tom declared grimly.  “Timmy might try to work, but I don’t know whether he would be able to live through the shock and shame of having to earn the money for paying his own bills in life.”

“There’s that irrepressible Dick again!” called Greg five minutes later.

“What’s he up to now?” asked Tom, from further up the creek.

“He has had his rub-down, got his clothing on and is now at work frying bacon and eggs.”

“Then don’t disturb him,” begged Reade, “or he might fry short of the quantity of food that is really going to be required.”