“Yes, sir. I keep ver’ quiet!” the man promised.
They left him and trudged down to the village. The eagles were getting heavier all the time and Jim proposed that they hire a cab to take them up to the school.
“Good idea,” approved Douglas. “These things get heavier with every step. I guess we can scare up a dollar or two between us, can’t we?”
They found that between them they had a few dollars and they hailed a passing cab. Gratefully they piled in and told the driver to take them to Woodcrest.
“What you got in them bags, boys?” the driver, a town character, said as they drove up the hill toward the school.
“Flower pots!” returned Terry, promptly.
“You don’t say!” cried the driver, sending out a cloud of smoke from his battered pipe. “Must have quite a number of pots in those bags!”
“Oh, we have,” Terry returned. “You see, the colonel is thinking of relandscaping the whole school, so we’re going to put plenty of flowers around.”
Almost the first one that they met in the hall when they carried the rescued eagles into the school was the colonel himself.
“Where in the world have you been, boys?” the headmaster cried. “And where did you collect all that mud?”