"Funny, ain't it!" he cried fiercely. "I guess you wouldn't laugh if it was your room!"
"No, I shouldn't," returned Duncan, sobering instantly. "It's mighty mean of me, I know, but I just couldn't help it. The whole mix-up struck me so hard that the laugh slipped out before I knew it. I won't do it again."
"When was it done?" asked Donald, making haste to get away from dangerous ground.
"While we were in Latin," returned Clarence, somewhat mollified. "Were you fellows at the Gym the whole hour?"
"We were here awhile," confessed Donald, looking hard at the leg of a chair that pointed reprovingly at him from the depths of the pile.
"Did you hear any one come in here?"
In the classroom Donald answered all questions addressed to the Pecks which were not indubitably intended for his brother, but under circumstances like the present, when mother-wit rather than book learning was required, he had the habit of falling back upon Duncan.
"Did we, Dun?" he asked, apparently trying to recollect.
Duncan hesitated. "I guess we were too much interested in what we were doing to listen to outside things," he said at length; and, turning hastily away to avoid his brother's eye, he sauntered around the pile.