"Ex-cuse me," squealed Jenks, elevating his voice. "The sofa is good enough for me."
Down he sat upon it, smiling triumphantly.
Frank still had the hatpin—which he had found on the floor beneath the sofa—ready for use, but he held his hand a bit, knowing he could give Jenks a greater shock if he should be pricked after, he had sat there a while in apparent security.
"Oh, you're a daring blade—you are!" sneered Scotch, fiercely, as he glared at Jenks. "You'd walk right up to the mouth of a cannon—if you knew it wasn't loaded!"
"Well, I never yet got frightened by a hair-cloth sofa," squeaked Jenks.
The widow smiled seductively on the long and lanky professor.
"You don't find nothing the matter with the sofy, do you, professor?" she asked.
"Not a thing," piped Jenks. "It is ever the wicked man who feels the pricks of conscience. Now, my conscience is easy, and so I do not feel——We-e-e-ow! Murder! I'm stabbed! I'm killed! We-e-ow!"
Professor Jenks shot into the air with such suddenness and vigor that he thumped his head against the low ceiling, which seemed to fling him back upon the sofa, and Frank promptly gave him a second dose of hatpin.
"Wo-o-ouch!" squealed the tall professor, bounding up again, and dancing wildly round the room, with his hands concealed beneath the tails of his coat. "That sofa is filled with broadswords and bayonets! It is stuffed with deadly weapons!"