This would be good enough fun, if only one of his many friends back home were along--Jack French, or Steve Vedder.

It was with them that he had shared such adventures in the past.

And yet not just such adventures, either.

This was more real than anything his adventures as a Boy Scout had brought him, though he belonged to a patrol that got in a lot of outdoor work, and that camped out every summer in a practical way.
Being alone took some of the zest out of what had seemed, once Lieutenant Ernst's loan had saved him from his most pressing worry, likely to be a bully adventure.

Now it seemed rather flat and stale.