the railroad station, Percival noting the speed, the smoothness with
which everything worked, and the apparent ease with which Jack
managed it all, as though he had always been used to such things.

"You're doing fine, Jack," he chuckled. "I suppose you can go
faster if you like. Will you let her out a bit?"

"Wait till I get away from the railroad station and the docks, Dick.
I'll have a clear way before me in a little while, and then I can
show off, but just now I'd rather take it easier."

"H'm! you take it easy enough as it is. Why, one would think that
you had been used to motorboats all your life."

"Not quite as long as that, Dick," with a smile. As they were passing
the railroad station they saw two big boys with not very prepossessing
faces standing on the wharf near a motor-boat moored alongside, one of
them, the biggest and most disagreeable looking, saying in a loud
voice and with a sneer which seemed habitual with him, as in fact it
was, his conversation being directed at the boys in the boat:

"Huh! Percival has hired Sheldon to run his boat for him. It's all
he's good for, and Dick don't know any more about boats than a cat."

"Gets him to run his auto, too," said the other. "He'd drive Dick's
carriage if he had one. Blacks his boots and brushes his clothes,
too, I'll bet. He's nothing but a valet anyhow."

Percival flushed crimson at these insults to Jack, the boys being
two of the most disliked in the Academy, and said hotly:

"I'll come and throw you two brutes in the river if you say any
more. Because Jack Sheldon had to work you think he is no good,
but he has you fellows skinned, in studies and in everything else.
You never did any work in your lives, you're too-----"

"Don't answer them, Dick," said Jack quietly, heading for the middle
of the river. "It won't do any good, and they'll talk all the more.
I don't mind it, and neither should you."

"Come and chuck us in the river, why don't you?" jeered the first of
the boys on shore, Peter Herring by name, and the chief bully of the
school. "You daren't! You're afraid of wetting your pretty clothes.
Yah! what an old tub! You'll never get back with that scow!"

"I'd like to thrash them!" sputtered Percival, who was of an impulsive
disposition. "I'm sorry that they are going to be with us this
summer, but I guess their fathers think they are better off with the
doctor to keep them in check than they would be sporting away thei