“Say, fellows,” cried the irrepressible Rattleton, “why is Browning like a member of a certain well-known religious organization?”
“Oh, go chase yourself out of here!” begged Bruce. “I’m already sick, and your weak jokes make me sicker.”
“It’s because he’s a Shaker.”
Browning groaned and turned his face toward the wall.
“Won’t some one kindly kill that idiot for me?” he pleaded.
Frank Merriwell came into the room, holding a handsome lancewood bow and a sheaf of arrows.
“If we are going to meet Ward Hammond and his Blue Mountain boys day after to-morrow,” he said, surveying the lounging group, “it strikes me that it would be well for the new members of Lake Lily Athletic Club to get in a little archery practice.”
To this there was a general assent, and the entire party prepared to leave the room, with the exception of Bruce Browning, who shivered and drew the blanket closer about him as they got up to go.
Out by the lake there was a level stretch of greensward. Here a target had been set up, and the members of the club had practiced at archery.
Both the new and the old members of the Lake Lily Athletic Club practiced with the bow so faithfully in the limited time given them that when they climbed to the archery ground on the wooded crest of Blue Mountain they felt that they would be able to give Ward Hammond and his friends a hard contest, if nothing more, though Hammond had been heard publicly to declare that the Lilywhites’ new members would add nothing to the strength of the club.