Sube stood up and brushed the moist ashes from his clothes. It was no use; everything was against him. He was both late and wet when he reached school, and his brow was more clouded than the sky; but it cleared wonderfully when a terrific downpour began shortly after he took his seat. As the deluge continued his spirits rose in spite of the fact that Miss Wheeler had notified him of her intention to detain him after school in retaliation for his unexcused tardiness.
As is often the case his mental exaltation took literary form, and, a forward pass having been fumbled, he was required to pick up from the floor and read aloud a cryptic epistle intended for the private consideration of Mr. Gizzard Tobin.
I dont wish nobody harm but I hope the rain keeps stinging down for therty days and therty nights S C
As a result of this outburst Sube was compelled to copy the word _thirty_ two hundred times to impress on his memory the correct way to spell it.
Sube's father was late for supper. He was very late; and he came in drenched to the skin. With him came Dr. Richards, also drenched.
"Where _have_ you been!" cried Mrs. Cane. "You've caught your death of cold, I'm sure--"
"Oh, I've taken care of that!" was the doctor's cheery reply. "We stopped in my office and took a little--preventive."
"But where have you been?" persisted she.
"Where haven't we been!" exclaimed the doctor with an irrepressible chuckle at the innocent face of Sube. "In the first place I was in the barber shop being shaved, when a telephone message came that a man had been terribly injured by falling into a threshing machine out at the Shepperd farm."
The doctor cast a sly glance at Sube, and noting the boy's complete immersion in his magazine, winked slyly at his father and went on.
"I took Sam along with me for the ride--and it was _some_ ride! It began to pour just after we started and the trip was simply one big mudhole after another; and when we reached the Shepperd farm and asked about the accident they laughed us out of the house! They wanted to know what we expected them to be threshing in the merry month of May!"
Shouts of laughter from Mr. Cane and the doctor stopped the recital for a time.
"Do tell the rest," urged Mrs. Cane, "so I can laugh too."