stay a week--two, if you can work it--and bring
Bender, and little Billy and Poddy, and three or four
more. The bungalow holds ten. Wire when--I'm
now putting things on ice."

Muggles looked around the circle and sent interrogatory
Marconigrams with his eyebrows. In
response Podvine said he'd go, and so did Billy
Salters. Bender thought he could come a day or two
later--the earning of their daily bread was not an
absorbing task with these young gentlemen--their
fathers had done that years before.

Muggles ran over in his mind the list of his engagements:
he was due at Gravesend on the tenth for a
week, to play golf; at his aunt's country-seat in
Westchester on the eleventh for the same length of
time, and on the twelfth he was expected to meet a
yacht at Cold Spring Harbor for a cruise up the
coast. He had accepted these invitations and had
fully intended to keep each and every one. Monteith's
letter, however, seemed to come at a time when
he really needed a more virile and bracing life than
was offered by the others. Here was a chance to
redeem his reputation. Lumber camps meant big
men doing big things--things reeking with danger,
such as falling trees, forest fires and log jams.
There might also be hair-breadth escapes in the hunting
of big game and the tramping of the vast wilderness.
This dressing three times a day and spending