“That’s mighty good of you,” said Captain Springer, with a smile. “And I’ll never forget that if it hadn’t been for you boys, I shouldn’t be here at all.”
The boys were still enthusiastic about his visit when they met the next morning.
“Isn’t the captain a dandy?” demanded Bob. “When he got to talking last night, I could have listened to him until morning. I’d like nothing better than to be with him on the iceberg patrol.”
“I wouldn’t mind taking a whirl at iceberg hunting myself, if I wasn’t tied down to school all the time,” grumbled Herb. “Seems as though I’d never be through school and be able to do what I want to.”
“Maybe if you spent more time thinking about Latin and math, and less about jokes, you’d get through sooner,” remarked Jimmy, taking a huge bite out of a big red apple.
“Listen to Socrates talking!” exclaimed Herb, in disdain. “You haven’t got even the beginnings of a sense of humor, but I don’t see that you’re getting through high school any sooner than I am, on that account.”
“Perhaps not,” agreed Jimmy, complacently. “But I’m not making people miserable by springing ancient jokes on them all the time.”
“Ancient!” exclaimed Herb, in an injured tone. “That’s the last thing in the world you can say about my jokes. Why, I think of most of them myself, so how can they be ancient?”
“Well, they seem that way, at any rate, after we’ve heard them five or six times,” retorted his rotund friend.
“Jimmy’s right there,” observed Joe. “Even hearing them once is hard on anybody.”