“Oh, don’t be a pup!” begged Alf. “Faculty isn’t going to catch us. Even if it did, what’s the odds? It isn’t anything but a perfectly good joke; absolutely harmless. I’ll bet all the others will be crazy to go.”
“Crazy to go, yes,” answered Tom, ambiguously. “You’ll have plenty without me. I don’t want to get in wrong just now and be kept off the Track Team, thank you.”
“Oh, you make me tired, Tom! Why, look here. I tell you no one can possibly know. I’ll have everything ready, and all we’ll have to do is to sneak quietly away to-morrow night, get the things from where I leave them, go over to Broadwood and do the trick. It won’t take us five minutes there, and we’ll be home and in bed by one o’clock. And think of the fun Friday morning, when those fresh-water kids get up and view the scene!”
“The trouble is, we won’t be there to see it,” objected Dan.
“We’ll hear about it afterward, though,” replied Alf, with a grin. “And I don’t have to be there to see it; I can see it now. Come on, Tom; be a sport.”
“Oh, all right, I’ll see you through, but I’ll bet a doughnut we get into trouble. Still, what’s a little trouble, after all? The world is full of it. But don’t you think it would be a lot safer if just we three attended to it?”
“Not so much fun, though,” said Alf. “The more the merrier. We’ll have to do our packing some time during the day, fellows.”
“Why? We won’t have to leave before about half-past ten,” said Dan. “I can do mine in a half hour. One thing that’s mighty comforting is, that if faculty does hear of it, we’ll be out of the way by then.”
“Oh, faculty will hear of it all right,” said Tom. “How about little Geraldine, Dan?”
“I guess we’d better leave him out of it. He’s a bit tender to be mixed up in such doings. Besides, he wouldn’t want to go if he knew about it.”
“Wouldn’t he!” exclaimed Alf, with a grin. “You tell him and see what he says!”
“No, he isn’t to hear anything about it,” replied Dan, firmly. “I don’t mind being called up myself, but as Gerald’s father holds me kind of responsible for the kid’s behavior, I prefer to have him stay out of it.”
“All right,” agreed Alf. “I’ll see the others, though, and I guess we’ll have a merry little expedition.”
It was all very well, however, for Dan to talk about leaving Gerald out of the fun, but not so easy to do it. It didn’t take Gerald long the next day to discover that something was up. Alf appeared in 28 Clarke just before dinner, breathless and mysterious, with his shoes muddy from the road to Greenburg, and led Dan out into the corridor to consult with him in whispers. Gerald said nothing then, but it was very evident to him that something was afoot, and that whatever it was, he was not to be invited to participate.