"The crabs! Take them off!" yelled Crabtree, continuing to dance around.
"Crabs? What made you bring crabs up here?"
"I—I—oh, my toes! Take them off!" shrieked Josiah Crabtree, and kicked out right and left. One of the crabs was flung off, to land in the hotel proprietor's face and to catch the man by the nose.
"My nose! He will bite it off!" cried the hotel man. "Kill the thing, Gillett—smash it with a-a-anything!"
And Gillett, the clerk, tried to do so, while the hotel man and
Crabtree continued to dance around in the wildest kind of fury.
Safe in their own room, the boys laughed until they cried. All
had gone to bed, and Tom lost no time in getting under the covers.
"Somebody has played a trick," began Crabtree when an extra nip on his knee cut him short. "Oh, my, I shall die!" he moaned. "I know I shall die!"
By this time the proprietor of the hotel had freed himself from the crab that had nipped him on the nose. "You won't die, but you'll get out of this hotel," he snarled. "Throw the crabs out of the window," he continued to his employees, and after a good deal of trouble one crab after another was hurled forth, the window being kept open in the meantime and the icy draught causing Crabtree to shiver as with the ague. As there seemed no help for it the ex-teacher began to dress again with all possible speed.
"If I find out who did this I'll—I'll kill him," moaned Josiah
Crabtree. "I've been nipped is a hundred places!"
"You'll leave this hotel!" said the proprietor. "I've had enough of you. First the room didn't suit, then the price was too high, and at dinner and supper you found all manner of fault with the menu. You'll go, and the quicker, the better."
"But look here—" began Crabtree.