"Fond—fiddlesticks! Let a fellow alone, can't you?"
"Don't tease him, Arthur," cried Charlie. "Here, I say, all of you, guess this: Mr. Martingale has ten fine horses, and there are only twenty-four feet among them all."
"Twenty four feet!" said Harry; "impossible! You say they are fine horses, and ten of them. Every horse has four feet, and four times ten are forty—that's certain."
"Perhaps," said little George, "some of them are a new style of horse; six have the right number of feet, making the twenty-four, and the rest crawl on their bellies, like snakes."
"Goodness! how absurd!" exclaimed Arthur. "I have heard of Mr. Barnum's woolly horse, and a saw-horse, and a chestnut horse, and a horse-chestnut; and a flying-horse, and a horse-fly; and a clothes-horse, and a horse-cloth; and a rocking-horse. But a snake-horse is something new."
"Give it up?" said Charlie. "Suppose you alter the spelling a little."
"Oh! I have it!" shouted Arthur. "The horses had twenty fore feet, and they also had twenty hind feet. That's the best catch I ever heard. Just see, fellows, what comes of being head-boy in spelling-class. I'm the boy for learning! I dare say Dr. Addup is crying his eyes out, because it is vacation, and he won't see me for a month."
"I've got twenty-four appetites," said Richard; "when is the plum-pudding coming up?"
"The fish for the first course, and here they are," said Charlie.
"But I don't like raw fish," said George; "and where is the fire to cook 'em?"