Down at the Bridgeboro station was a congestion of trunks and other luggage bespeaking the end of the merry play season.

And saddest of all, the windows of the stationery stores were filled with pencil-boxes and blank books and other horrible reminders of the opening of school.
Look where one would, these signs confronted the boys of Bridgeboro, and there was no escaping them.

Even the hardware store had straps and tin lunch boxes now filling its windows, the same window where fishing rods and canoe paddles had lately been displayed.
Even the man who kept the shoe store had turned traitor and gathered up his display of sneaks and scout moccasins, and exhibited in their places a lot of school shoes.

"Sensible footwear for the student" he called them.

Even the drug store where mosquito dope and ice cream sodas had been sold now displayed a basket full of small sponges for the sanitary cleansing of slates.