n other countries and have shore leave they have to remember
that they must behave themselves and not disgrace their governments."

"You can't sail out of reach of Uncle Sam, eh? Apparently he knows in
a general way just how you are conducting yourself all the time,"
smiled Dick.

"That's about it," acquiesced Walter.

Whistling to the dogs, they turned about.

"What a pile you know about all this," Dick presently observed.

"Shucks! No, I don't," blushed His Highness. "I am only repeating what
Bob spieled off to me. He likes to talk when he's home and I like to
listen. It's interesting--at least I think so. Besides, I'm proud of
Bob knowing such a lot. I wish I did."

The lad dug his heel into the moist sand and watched the hole fill
with water.

"Somehow I'm an awful boob at books," he suddenly confessed. "I hate
so to study that Ma fairly has to haul me along by the hair or I'd
never go to school. I barely skinned through this year. Up to the very
last minute we all had cold chills for fear I wouldn't."

Dick shot the offender a sympathetic glance.

"I don't like reading about things myself so well as doing them," he
confided. "I'm crazy about machinery. It's fun to tinker with
it--take it to pieces and put it together again. I like nothing better
than to overhaul an engine."

He held up two grease-stained hands.

"It horrifies my mother," he continued, "but my father doesn't seem to
mind if I am all black with oil from my car or the motor boats. What I
want now is a wireless outfit. I'm going to strike Dad for one my
birthday. It comes the last of this month and he might as well give me
that as anything else. Do you suppose if he got it we could rig it up
together?"

Walter's eyes opened at the casualness of the observation.

In his family a birthday was an occasion for a chocolate cake, some
neckties, and perhaps a pair of rubber boots or a similar useful gift.
Or it sometimes brought with it a book and a box of candy. Never by
any chance did its felicitations expand into a gift so colossal as a
wireless apparatus. The breach between the two lads, which during the
exchange of confidences had narrowed into nothingness, widened
abruptly.

"A good set would be some present," he commented, thinking, perhaps,
the other boy might be ignorant of its value.

"Oh, I guess it would not break Dad," smiled Dick serenely. "He gave
me my car last year, and the year before--let me think--oh, the pups!"
He poin