“I am not prepared to translate. I—er—I had such a headache last night I couldn’t study.”
“Headache is good!” muttered Dale into Pepper’s ear. “He was out on the lake having a good time and smoking cigarettes!”
“Perhaps the cigarettes made his head ache,” answered Pepper.
“Stop that talking!” bawled Josiah Crabtree, and rapped sharply on his desk with a ruler. “Kearney, you may go on with the lesson.”
Now as it chanced, Dave Kearney was an exceptionally good Latin scholar, so he translated fairly well, even though he had not looked over the paragraph given. Then Stuffer was called on.
“I studied only up to twenty-three,” said he. “That’s as far as you said we were to go.”
“Don’t contradict me! Don’t you dare!” shouted Josiah Crabtree, red in the face with rage. “I know what lessons I give out. Conners, you go on.”
The big boy of the class shrugged his shoulders.
“I can go on, but not very well, sir,” he answered. “I understood we were to go to the end of paragraph twenty-two only. I may be mistaken——”
“You’re right!” came from a cadet in the rear of the room.