"Why, they're the boys!" I exclaimed, hysterically.
"What boys?" queried Newland.
"The Club! . . . The Rejuvenation Club, man! . . ." I cried, gazing anxiously at Gran'pa, round whom they were clustering, like a pack of hungry hounds.
"Three cheers!" shouted a thin, reedy voice out of the half-clad mass of surging humanity.
"Hip-hip-hurrah!" came the unanimous reply.
"Hurrah! . . . Hurrah! . . ."
Their excitement was piteous to behold. Some of the older and weaker of them were blubbering with joy. They jostled and pushed one another, laughed, shouted, jumped up on tiptoe, waved their arms, and coughed and spluttered with overexertion—behaving for all the world as if they had just been rescued from some such calamity as a shipwreck, or a six months' siege. In their wholesale endeavor to reach Gran'pa and shake his hand, they gravely endangered not only his toes but even his life.
"Gentlemen!" I heard him shout. "Gentlemen! . . . Confound you! . . ."
In the momentary lull which followed, he managed to back his way to the aeroplane and climb into a seat. Standing there, he appealed for a hearing.
"Let him speak!" piped the same thin voice which had called for those lusty cheers.