For a moment Fenn did not speak. Then he understood the joke that had been played.
“You fellows think you’re awful smart; don’t you?” he demanded. “Well, all I’ve got to say is——”
“That you’re stung! Eh, Stumpy, my lad?” cried Bart good naturedly, clapping his chum on the back. “Take your medicine like a man. You’re stung good and proper. We thought your animals would be lonesome, so we added a few for luck. Pretty, aren’t they?” and, at the sight of Fenn’s bewildered face, Bart went off in a paroxysm of mirth, finally lying down on the ground outside the shack, and rolling over and over.
Frank and Ned joined him, and their howls brought Mrs. Masterson to the back door to see what was the matter. As soon as she saw the four chums she knew, without being told, that it was some joke.
“It wouldn’t be them, if they weren’t up to something,” she observed, as she went on getting breakfast.
Fenn was not long proof against the infectious laughter of his chums. The frown faded from his face, and a smile replaced it. Soon, he too, was laughing heartily at the joke played on him.
“All I’ve got to say,” he remarked, “is that you fellows went to a lot of work to get a laugh. You must have brought nearly all the school collection,” for he recognized the professor’s specimens.
“We did,” admitted Bart, “but it was worth it all; eh, fellows?”
The boys paused to admire Fenn’s “pets” as well as to take a more careful view of the reptiles they had “borrowed” from the school. Then Bart and his two chums put back into the bags the snakes, lizards, turtles, toads and alligators belonging to the professor, and hurried back with them to the school. They were lucky in escaping observation by the janitor, and soon the science-cabinet cages held their former tenants.
There was a football game that afternoon, in which the four chums took part, playing hard and well, their team winning the contest by a narrow margin. They took a short walk, Sunday, discussing the game, and talking rather vaguely of the possibility of going to a winter camp that year.