“He looks pretty seedy,” confessed Frank. “What kind of a game is he up to, I wonder?”
Hooker had paused a moment to speak to the old Jew.
“Then it is beginning to dawn on you,” said Bart triumphantly, “that he may be up to some sort of a game?”
“He can’t be going to a masquerade in that rig.”
“He might be going to a poverty ball, but Hooker isn’t the sort of chap to take in balls of any kind.”
The shadowed student had changed his respectable clothing for a ragged suit and a battered soft hat, which was slouched over his eyes. In fact, his appearance had been altered by the change of clothing so that he now seemed decidedly disreputable.
“No, he is not going to attend a ball,” said the dazed Merriwell. “By Jove! this affair is becoming interesting, Hodge! It can’t be that he’s been forced to sell his clothes in order to raise some money, can it, Hodge?”
“Sell nothing!” exclaimed Bart. “Do you think he’d wear that sort of rig back to college? Why, he’d be ridiculous!”
“But some of the men who have money to burn sometimes dress almost as bad as that.”
“But not hardly. They do not look like toughs, and Mr. Hooker now looks like an out-and-out tough.”