The program was carried out as arranged, and, save that for the rest of the evening Roy felt rather played out, he experienced no unpleasant results from his adventure. Of course the meeting of the F. H. S. I. S. called for that evening did not take place, for although Roy professed his readiness to attend, the others would not hear of it.
“You’ve had a shock,” declared Harry firmly, “and must be very careful of yourself for several days. I’ll make some more peppermint tea for you to-morrow, and, and--what are you making such a face about?”
“Oh, nothing, only couldn’t you manage to get a little sugar into it the next time?”
“Didn’t I put any--” began Harry. “Oh, I didn’t, did I? I’m awfully sorry, Roy! Was it terribly nasty?”
“Well, there are some things I haven’t tasted,” answered Roy judicially, “but it was pretty bad, Harry.”
“I forgot all about the sugar,” Harry mourned, “but I’ll put in enough the next time to make up!”
As Chub had predicted, the story of Roy’s accident and rescue was all over school on Monday, while on Wednesday a graphic and highly-colored account of it appeared in the Silver Cove paper. One result was that Harry found herself once more in the glare of publicity at Madame Lambert’s School and another was that Doctor Emery promulgated a rule restricting skating on the river to the immediate vicinity of the boat-house.
On Monday forenoon at eleven there was a full attendance of the Improvement Society in the barn. It was such a busy meeting that it is quite impossible to give an account of it in detail. Strange to say, every one had tried his or her hand at composing an appeal to the graduates, just as they had agreed to do, and each one read his production aloud and listened good-naturedly to the criticisms from the others which followed.
“What we’ve got to do now,” said Dick, “is take these four and work them over into one. But I suppose there isn’t much hurry about that, because we decided that the best way to begin is to make an appeal to some chap with a lot of money and get him to give a lump as a starter. To do that we’ve got to find out who the rich ones are. That means taking the Doctor into the scheme the next thing. So I move that Roy and Chub be appointed a committee of two to wait on him this afternoon, or as soon as possible, and tell him about it. And Harry and I will get to work on this circular.”