“I’d give a dollar for a nice cup of hot chocolate,” he announced. “I’m hungry as a bear. Got anything to eat, you fellows?”
“Not a thing,” replied Alf. “I can’t keep grub here; Tom eats it all up. Anyhow, eating between meals,” he added, virtuously, “is very bad for the health.”
“It’s good for the tummy, though,” said Dan, crossing over and seating himself at the other end of the window-seat. “Well, what’s new?”
“New! Nothing’s new. Nothing has happened in this dead-and-alive hole since――since the hockey game. I detest this time of year, don’t you?”
“It is a bit dull, but I guess we’ll be outdoors in a few days. Gee, but I’ll be glad to feel a baseball again!”
“Me too. We’ve been discussing the Track Team’s chances. Now that Gerald has decided to come out for the mile it looks like a pretty sure thing for Yardley.”
“Oh, you can make all the fun you want,” said Gerald, cheerfully. “I’ll bet, though, that I’ll win just as many points as you will, Alf.”
“That’s a good safe wager,” observed Tom, lazily. “Of course, I’m not saying Alf might not win a third some time if he could keep his feet. But he always takes a header just before the tape, and tears up the track. Gets an idea, I suppose, that the quickest way to get there is to slide. Shows his baseball training.”
“Oh, run away! I never fell but once, you old chump!”
“That’s all Adam fell,” said Dan, “and see what happened to him! By the way, did I tell you what Tom calls his ice-boat? The _Planked Steak_.”
“I asked him why he called it that and he said it was made of planks, and the mast was the stake. Not bad, what?”
Alf groaned. “It sounds like one of Tom’s jokes. His sense of humor is decidedly heavy.”
“My sense of hunger is decidedly strong,” said Tom. “And it’s five minutes of six. Let’s go over. Want to wash up here, you two?”
“Yes,” Dan answered, “though I feel as though I was pretty well washed already. I’ll bet there isn’t a really dry spot about me. Where’d you get this villainous soap, Tom?”
“Don’t ask me; that’s some of Alf’s. Doesn’t it smell fierce?”
“That soap,” responded Alf, haughtily, “is the best made, and extremely expensive. The delicious perfume which you mention and can’t appreciate is lilac. That soap costs me two and a half cents a cake, at Wallace’s.”