“I wouldn’t trust you, Ruddy, or trust your friends either,” remarked Dan Baxter, bitterly. “You’d pretend to be friends and then get us into a hole the first chance you got. I know you!”
“You evidently judge us by yourself,” said Pepper, hotly. “We are not so mean.”
“Don’t waste any words on them,” said Andy. “Come on and let them take their pictures,” and he skated away, and Jack and Pepper followed.
“What a fellow Dan Baxter is!” sighed the youthful major of the cadets. “No matter how nice a fellow tries to be to him he seems to resent it.”
“It’s because he doesn’t want us for friends,” answered Pepper. “He prefers fellows like Coulter and Paxton, and that sneak, Mumps.”
Just then a merry crowd of skaters swept along, playing snap-the-whip. Our friends were invited to join in, and the sport soon became so uproarious that the bully and his associates were forgotten for the time being.
“Here is where I live!” ejaculated Pepper, as he skated along. “Come on, fellows, and snap for keeps this time.”
“Not too fast!” cried out Stuffer, who chanced to be on the end at the time. “I—I—can’t keep up, you—know!” And then down he went on the smooth ice and rolled over and over. Several other skaters went down likewise, and a general laugh arose. Then up the cadets leaped, to form a new “whip.”
“Only five minutes more!” said Dale, consulting a watch he carried. “We won’t dare to be late to-day.”
“Not much, with old Crabtree on guard,” answered Pepper. “If we are he’ll be certain to keep us in to-morrow for it.”