He consulted it, and a look of consternation came over his face.
“Well, well!” he cried. “I was to have conducted a chemistry examination this afternoon, but I forgot all about it. Pshaw! How forgetful I am becoming! It is too late, now, though,” he added with a sigh. “Too late!”
Jerry Hopkins smiled, and had it not been so near dusk Bart and some of the others would have seen him winking at them.
“How ever did you manage it?” asked Bart, becoming exceedingly friendly with Jerry all of a sudden. “Did you kidnap Baldy?”
“Well, you might call it that,” admitted Jerry. “But he himself helped some. This is the way it was. I knew you had to play on the team, and you told me you would surely flunk in chemistry. So I argued that the only way to do was to have the exam postponed.
“Now, if there is one professor here that is as absent-minded and forgetful as Professor Snodgrass, it is the dean. And I happened to know something else about them. They hold radically different views on fossil shell formations. In fact, they come about as near to quarreling on that subject as two such delightful old gentlemen ever do come. So I knew if I could get them started on a discussion about fossils they might keep it up and the dean forget all about the passage of time. I also knew that I had to get the dean away from the college, or, even in the midst of a hot discussion, something might break in on it to remind him of the exam.
“Now I happened to know where there was a bed of fossils over near Fox Swamp. So I got a few specimens, and took them to Professor Snodgrass, pretending to be puzzled on a point concerning them. I mildly differed with him in some of his statements, and said that Professor Baldwin held different views, which, by the way, he did. He wouldn’t agree with Professor Snodgrass in a thousand years, so I knew I was safe.
“I pretended to be very much interested and puzzled, and I suggested that it would be a good thing if Professor Snodgrass and Professor Baldwin would accompany me to Fox Swamp, where we could go into the matter more thoroughly.”
Jerry paused to chuckle.