“I’m the other side of the ’ouse,” Bob answered Dick.  “You can’t carry this hidee through without my ’elp.”

“We hired you to take us to the woods.”

“You ’ired me and my wagin and them harticles—­whoa!” (Bob’s “harticles” stopped)—­“to take you to Crow Roost.  You didn’t ’ire me for ‘Awley’s, and I haint goin’ ther’ without a new contract.”

“What difference is it to you where we go?” Dick demanded.  “You belong to us for the day.”

“Four miles further and back,—­height miles makes a difference to the harticles.”

Murmurs of disapproval rendered Dick bold.

“Suppose we say you’ve got to take us to Hawley’s,” he said, warmly.

“Suppose you do,” said Bob, coolly.

“I’d like to know what you’d say about it,” said Dick, warmly.

“Say it and I’ll let you know,” said Bob, coolly,—­so very coolly that Dick was cooled.

A timely prudence enforced a momentary silence.  He forebore taking a position he might not be able to hold.  “Say, boys, shall we make him take us to the grove?”

Bob smiled.  Val Duke smiled, too, in his unobtrusive way, and suggested modestly, “We ought to pay extra for extra work.”

“Pay him another quarter and be done with it,” said Kit Pott.

Beside being good-natured, Kit didn’t enjoy the stopping there in the middle of the road.

“It’s mighty easy to pay out other people’s money,” sneered Dick, resenting it that Kit seemed going over to the enemy.

Kit’s face was aflame.  His father had refused him any money to contribute toward the picnic expenses, and here was Dick taunting him with it before all the girls.

“You boys teased me to come along because you didn’t know where to find the nuts,” said Kit.

The girls began to nudge each other, making whimpered explanations and commentaries, agreeing that is was mean in Dick to mind Kit, and Clara Hooks spoke up boldly;

“I wanted Kit to come along because he’s pleasant and isn’t forever quarreling.”

“Oh!” Dick sneered more moderately, “we all know you like Kit Pott.  You and he had better get hitched; then, you’d be pot-hooks.”

This set everybody to laughing, even Dirk’s adversary, Bob Trotter.

“Pretty bright!” said Julius Zink.

“Bright, but not pretty,” said Mat Snead, blushing at the sound of her voice.

“Hurrah!  Mat’s waked up,” said Julius.

“It’s the first time she’s spoken since we started,” said Sarah Ketchum.

“This isn’t the first time you’ve spoken,” Mat quietly retorted, blushing over again.

Everybody laughed again, even Sarah Ketchum.

“Sarah always puts in her oar when there’s any water,” said Constance Faber.

“I want to know how long we’re to sit here, standing in the middle of the road,” said Julius.

Again everybody laughed.  When grammar-school boys and girls are on a picnic, a thing needn’t be very witty or very funny to make them laugh.  From the ease with which this party exploded into laughter, it may be perceived that in spite of the high words and the pop-gun firing, there was no deep-seated ill-humor among them.