“Wake me up when he does that last,” laughed Leslie. “He’ll play second fiddle to a lot of us besides Dick, who have set out to have a fling for the money.”
Dick himself did not feel at all uneasy. He was coming along finely with his farce, and already began to entertain high hopes that it would land the prize. As Leslie was himself laboring with considerable vim to compose a similar effort, of course Dick could not read any of his work to his best chum, so he took it out on his folks at home, all of whom declared that it was “just splendid.”
As usual the two boys walked home together.
“One good thing I can see about Nat joining the club,” ventured Leslie, as they sauntered along leisurely, “is the fact that for the time being it may keep him out of mischief. For instance, here we are taking it easy going home, without any fear of being suddenly pelted with a shower of rocks, or having some trick played on us.”
“I hope that Mr. Holwell won’t be disappointed,” ventured Dick, who was very fond of the minister, as were most of the boys; “because I can see he is beginning to believe Nat’s changing his ways. Some of us boys would like to see that same thing, but we’ll only believe it when he’s proved himself sincere.”
“And Dick, I don’t believe Nat’s forgiven us for the way we upset his little game on the night he waylaid us,” continued Leslie. “You remember both Nat and Dit did have a black eye apiece the next day, though they claimed to have gotten them by running against something in the dark. We knew what it was they struck; and most of the other fellows did too.”
“Yes, I saw him looking pretty hard at me more than once,” admitted Dick, “and could give a good guess what he was thinking he’d like to do while I was hanging head-down from the trapeze. But both of us will always be careful whenever Nat’s in the gymnasium.”
“How about our scheme, Dick?” continued Leslie. “You keep on telling me that hardly a day passes without little Billy wandering over into Old Jed Nocker’s yard and meeting the deacon. By this time it strikes me the crabbed old man must have begun to get pretty much interested in our Billy.”
“Oh! he certainly is,” came the prompt reply, “and has even been questioning the little chap about his mother, whom he knows simply as the Widow Smith, and has only glimpsed through the trees as she walked about the Brandon grounds.”
“Then you’ll be wanting to spring the trap before a great while, I reckon?” pursued Leslie, eagerly.