“Why, what’s happened, Professor?” questioned Jerry, with quick sympathy.
“I lent some money,” explained Professor Snodgrass, “to one of my friends—an old friend with whom I went through college—to help him 74 over a hard place. But he has not got over his troubles; in fact, his affairs are growing worse, and it looks as if I would never get my money back. And that will cripple me, cripple me badly, boys. Yes, I need the money that Professor Petersen was good enough to leave me.”
“Well, let’s hope that you find those girls quickly, Professor, and get that inheritance very soon,” said Ned.
“But I am afraid I shall have to wait until you boys capture Germany, and then I can go in and search.”
“Us boys—with help,” chuckled Jerry.
“Well, if it keeps up the way we’ve started we’ll soon have the Hun on the run!” declared Ned, and he spoke with some truth, for soon was to be the beginning of the successful American advance.
Greatly to their relief the boys saw little of Noddy Nixon, for he was housed in barracks at the opposite end of the camp from those in which they were billeted. But they met him occasionally, and listened with ill-concealed disgust to his boasts, and his talk of having tried in vain to enlist before he was drafted.
“If they’d give me an aeroplane I’d go over the German lines and make ’em sit up and take notice!” boasted the bully.
“Why don’t you send home for what’s left of 75 your ‘Tin Fly’?” asked Ned, with a wink at his chums.
“Aw, you dry up!” commanded Noddy, for this airship, which he had once built to compete in an exhibition, was a sore point with him, as it had not justified its name.