wheedling voice. His mother only laughed, but Jerry felt sure she
would. Besides, there was his dollar alarm clock.

Jerry repented his request when sharp at twelve o'clock he was
called for noonday dinner. He was sleepy and cross and not a bit
hungry. His muscles were sore, and the drill to Lost Island did not
have quite the romance by broad daylight that it had had a few hours
before.

Jerry watched his father put on his hat and hurry back to work, with
a great deal of relief. His mother was much easier to handle in a
case of this sort.

"You won't mind if I don't get back till late?" he asked, hoping she
would give her unqualified consent to his remaining away as long as
he saw fit. "You promised me I could go camping this summer--let me
take it now, _please_, ma."

"Will you promise me to come back and let me pick the birdshot out
of you after you've made a landing on Lost Island?" she asked in
mock anxiety. As a matter of fact, Mrs. Ring was about as proud of
her big boy as a mother well could be without making herself a
nuisance to the neighbors. From his earliest boyhood she had
cultivated the independence of spirit he showed with his first pair
of real trousers, and now she often strained a point to let him
exercise it. To be sure, she sometimes wondered how much was genuine
self-confidence and how much was a reckless love of adventure.

Now she raised her eyebrows in denial, but at the eager look on the
boy's face she relented. "Trot along, Jerry," she agreed, with a