Yet there was nothing of the mollycoddle about Bobby. Fun appealed to him just as strongly as it ever did to any ten year old boy.
There were certain set rules of Rockledge School that he would not break and that he kept Fred from breaking.
"There’s no fun in getting caught and held up to the whole school as dishonorable," he told Fred. "We’re expected to keep in bounds. We know the bounds well enough. And if we want to go out of them, we have only to ask, and give a good reason, to get permission to go farther."
"Aw, they treat us as if we were a lot of babies," growled Fred Martin.
"They do nothing of the kind," Bobby replied. "Doctor Raymond treats us as though we were gentlemen. He trusts to our _honor_. I wouldn’t disappoint him for a farm!"
"We-ell!" sighed Fred. "I suppose you’re right, Bobby. I—I almost wish he didn’t treat us just this way. There’d be some fun in busting up the old rules!"
And that was where Dr. Raymond showed his wisdom. He knew how to manage boys with the least amount of friction.
Weeks passed, full of work and play, and no further news came of the lost steamship on which Mr. and Mrs. Blake had sailed for Brazil. The wreckage had been sighted off the Orinoco, and the name of the steamship was plain upon the wreck. But it might have drifted a long way after the catastrophe. Just _where_ the ship had been burned, nobody could guess.
No boat from her, no word from her captain or crew, came to the owners in New York. She had been a freight boat, carrying on that trip scarcely a score of passengers.
Much of this Bobby did not hear, or understand. He clung like a limpet to the imaginative idea of a shipwreck that Barrymore Gray had drawn for him. And it was well that this was so.
Thanksgiving came and went. The Belden school came over in the forenoon to Rockledge and its football team was nicely thrashed by the Rockledge eleven. The Lower School went almost mad with delight; and Fred Martin and Larry Cronk, the Belden boy, came almost to blows on the campus.
Neither of the Lower Schools had forgotten the hot potato fight on the island. Ere this, Bobby and his friends had completed their camp and had begun to furnish it, but they hoped the youngsters from Belden would learn nothing about the hideout.