“Now we’ll take Joe’s skiff back and put it where we found it, provided the boat-house is open,” said Tom. “If there is any boy in the world who ought to be supremely happy, he is the fellow. He has every thing he can ask for, including a rich and good-natured uncle, who takes him off on hunting and fishing trips nearly every year. Why that boy, young as he is, has shot caribou and moose and caught salmon.”
Yes, Joe Wayring was happy, but it was not wholly on account of his pleasant surroundings. His source of happiness was within himself, and he knew it. He had been taught that lesson at the same time that he was being instructed in athletics and field-sports. He thought more of others than he did of Joe Wayring, and he would go into the dumps in a minute if he saw any of his friends in a disconsolate mood. If things didn’t go right with him—and they went wrong sometimes, as they do with every body—it made no sort of difference with Joe’s good-nature. He kept his troubles to himself; but Tom would get angry and go into the sulks and make all around him miserable. While going on the principle that whatever is worth doing at all is worth doing well, Joe was nevertheless perfectly willing to be beaten by any one who could do it fairly; but Tom wanted to be first at any cost. This was the principal difference between the two boys.
Tom cast off the skiff’s painter while Loren and Ralph stepped the mast and shook out the sail, and in twenty minutes more they found themselves in the boat-house, where Joe and his two friends were waiting for them.
“I saw you coming and took the cover off one of my pets so that you could take a look at her,” said the former, directing the attention of his visitors to a neat cedar shell in which he had been wont to win honors before he became a convert to canoeing. “She has taken me first by the judges’ boat in more than one hotly-contested race while I was going to school at Dartmouth Academy. Handsome, isn’t she? No doubt you will be surprised to hear me say it, but _there_ is something that I think more of than I do of her.”
As Joe said this, he pointed toward an ungainly looking object which lay on the floor at the further end of the boat-house. It was a canvas canoe, whose battered sides bore evidence to numerous encounters with sharp-pointed rocks and snags.