“Nothing very good. Eighteen seconds was my best.”
Bruce’s eagerness languished. “You ought to do better than that. If you don’t play football, get Collins to help you this fall.”
When the next day passed and no Peck appeared, Sam quietly moved the furniture of the stay-away to the other bedroom, and took up his quarters in the corner room, which possessed obvious advantages over its mate. The reasoning here was as straight as Euclid. This unknown quantity, Peck, as original occupant, enjoyed a prior claim to the desirable room. Against all later comers the Archer claim took precedence. Any claim, however good, is strengthened by actual occupancy. If Peck wasn’t coming, Sam might as well have the room as give it to some one else.
That evening Archer received a call from three inhabitants of his “well.” They came in boldly, addressed him jauntily, and proceeded to throw the sofa pillows at each other and his own surprised self. Presently one grabbed a baseball bat and called for a game with the pillows. Another seized a tennis racquet and began to whack a ball with indefinite recklessness, but largely at Archer’s head. When one of the missiles narrowly escaped the shade of his new lamp, Sam, whose ire had been rising, waded into the chief offender, threw him down and beat him hard with the pillow, was pulled off by another, on whom he immediately turned with the same vigor, gave cuffs and received them, and was finally, after a hard struggle, subdued by the combined efforts of the three. After this the trio let him up, shook hands with him, assured him that he was “all right,” and departed suddenly. They had hardly time to escape into a room close at hand, and Sam to pick up his cushions and the tennis ball, when an ominous knock was heard at the door, and Mr. Alsop appeared.
“What’s all this noise, Archer?” he began sharply. “Don’t you understand that no rough-housing is tolerated in this building?”
“Yes, sir,” panted Sam, non-committal.
“What’s been going on here?”
“I’ve had some visitors.”
Mr. Alsop eyed him sternly. “Who were they?”
Now this was a very wrong question for Mr. Alsop to put. If he had possessed half as much common sense as energy and devotion to supposed duty, he would never have asked it. He counted on the newcomer’s inexperience, and hoped to get a grip on two or three unruly characters in his well, which would help him in maintaining order in his territory later on. He did not consider that in extorting evidence from the new boy he would be exposing the thoughtless betrayer to months of annoyance and contemptuous treatment at the hands of the mischief-makers. Fortunately Archer’s instinct was truer than the instructor’s.