"Hello!" cried Fenton. "I saw you at practice. That's a dandy trick you worked, Phil. My uncle says that----"
"Ford," began Tom gravely, "have you ever had smallpox?"
"Smallpox? My good gracious, no! You don't mean to say that there's a case of it here?"
"We haven't been exposed to smallpox," went on Tom, "but we are both suffering from a severe attack of Uncleitis, so if you don't want to catch it you'd better keep away from us."
"Hu! I guess you think that's a joke!" exclaimed Ford as he turned and walked away. Then Tom and Phil entered their room.
Something in the look of their faces attracted the attention of Sid.
"What's the matter?" he asked, despite Tom's frantic gestures behind Phil's back, which motions were made with a view to keeping Sid quiet.
"I'm afraid I'll have to go--go where my mother is, any minute," said Phil brokenly. "I--I guess I'll pack up so--so's to be ready."
Then the tension broke, and the nervous force that had girt him about when he was on the gridiron gave way, and he sobbed brokenly. Tom instantly began rearranging the books on the table, where they were piled in artistic confusion, and raised such a dust that Sid sneezed. The latter was in the old armchair, which had been mended, after a fashion, following the throwing of it from the window in the fire scare. As Sid tried to get up from the depths of it, there came a crash, and the antique piece of furniture settled heavily on one side, like a ship with a bad list to port.
"There you go!" cried Tom, glad to have a chance to speak sharply. "What are you trying to do--smash it all to pieces? Can't you get out of a chair without busting it?"
"I--I didn't mean to," spoke Sid so gently, and in such a contrast to Tom's fiery words, that Phil could not restrain an exclamatory chuckle. It was just the thing needed to change the current that was setting too strongly toward sadness, and a moment later the three were carefully examining the chair.
"It's only a leg broken," said Phil at length, and during the inspection he kept his face in the shadow. "I can fix it to-morrow," he went on, and when he arose he was himself again.
"Better put an iron brace on, if Sid is going to do double back somersaults in it," went on Tom with simulated indignity. "This isn't a barn, Sid. It's a gentlemen's room."