But when they came to study the hotel circular that Alliston gave them, and noted the cost of board per week, this ardor received a dampener. “Phew!” said Holmes, “we can’t stand that. I don’t own our bank yet.” “No, we can’t, that’s a fact,” said Clayton. “I’d want more of a raise in my pay than I expect to get for years before I could afford that sum. The dickens! I thought these country places were cheap always--and here’s a little place we’ve never heard of that charges more than half our big hotels here in Boston.” [Illustration: AT WORK IN HER OWN STRAWBERRY PATCH] “Well, we’ve got to give up that idea, then,” Holmes said. “I suppose, though, we might find a place at some farmhouse that wouldn’t charge too high.” “The trouble is,” Clayton responded, “that I don’t like to go poking off into a region where we don’t know a soul, and take our chances of finding a comfortable stopping-place at the right price. Then, you see, it’s going to cost like anything getting there--just the fare on the railroad. I don’t know as we ought to have considered the thing at all.” [Illustration: SEPTEMBER] “I hate to give it up,” said Holmes. “We’ve seen a good deal of the shore, but have had hardly a sight of the country. It would be a great thing, for a change, to take that trip to Vermont. Now, why couldn’t we try camping out? That’s what the youngsters do in all the small boys’ books I’ve ever read. We’re rather older than the boys who were in the habit of doing that sort of thing in the books. But then, you know, that may be a good thing. It may have given us a chance to accumulate wisdom sufficient to avoid those hairbreadth adventures the youngsters were always having. They are good enough to read about, but deliver me from the experience.” “Harry,” said Clayton, “I believe that’s a good idea.” [Illustration: EVENING] The conversation and thinkings necessary to settle the details were many and lengthy, and I forbear repeating them. The long and short of it is that on Monday, August 14, in the earliest gray of the morning, they were on the train that was to carry them to the Vermont paradise they had in mind. John Clayton, as luck would have it, worked in a dry-goods house, and therefore in planning a tent he was enabled to get the cloth for its makeup at a trifle above cost. He and Harry made numerous visits to the public library on spare evenings and consulted a variety of volumes devoted more or less directly to the science of camping out. The amount of information they got on the subject was rather bewildering, but they simplified it down to a few things absolutely necessary to think of beforehand, and concluded to trust to commonsense for solving further problems. “Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof,” said Harry, who attended Sunday-school regularly.