“Who proposed this auto trip, anyhow?” grumbled Ned.
“I did,” confessed Jerry. “But I guess it would have been better to have come by train, and have had a chauffeur bring our car on later. I’m sorry, fellows, that----”
“Oh, it’s all right,” Ned hastened to say. “I was only joking. I don’t know what’s the matter with me to-night. I seem to be on the outs all around.”
“It’s your liver,” said Jerry with a laugh. “I don’t hold it against you.”
“Fox-trotting is good for it,” observed Bob.
“Sluggish and torpid livers. I guess that’s what you’ve got.”
“Get out!” laughed Ned. “I only have one liver.”
They sped along, and presently a new moon showed above the horizon, shining now and then through the masses of scudding clouds. The road was good, and Jerry had turned the wheel over to Ned, as the latter had not driven much that day, and Jerry was rather tired from the strain.
They came to the top of a little hill, and saw, not far away, a group of buildings revealed in the moonlight.
“There she is!” exclaimed Bob. “There’s Boxwood Hall!”
“It doesn’t look like the pictures,” declared Ned, dubiously.
“Just what I was going to say,” remarked Jerry. “It doesn’t look a bit like Boxwood Hall.”
“I don’t know, unless some of the buildings have been destroyed since that catalogue came out. But if that had happened Professor Snodgrass would have told us,” Ned declared.
“Well, we’ll see in a few minutes,” observed Jerry.
They motored on until they came to where a gateway at the roadside led up to the group of buildings they had noticed, and then, in the glare of their headlights they read over the arch:
For a moment no one spoke. Then Jerry burst out with:
“Well, what in the world is happening to us?”
“Why don’t you add to the general hilarity?” asked Jerry.
“Well, I--I’m--stumped!” murmured the stout lad.
“If that’s all you can think of to say you might better have kept still,” laughed Ned. “We sure have been up against it to-day!”
“About as bad luck as we ever had,” admitted Jerry. “Still it might be worse.”
“The worst is yet to come,” quoted Bob, with a laugh. They all joined in, for, after all, there was a funny side to the whole thing.
“Did that sign where the red lantern was say the left road went to Fordham?” asked Jerry.