“There is no telling. But we want you to be careful when you go out. You don’t want to fall in with such a bad egg as Davenport.”
“You boys had better be careful yourselves,” broke in Mary. “I guess that man would rather do something to you than to us. From all accounts, he hates you and Uncle Dick like poison.”
“Oh, Jack, do be careful!” said Ruth, when the boys were ready to depart. “Why, for all you know, that rascal might try to shoot you!”
“You be careful, too, Fred,” came from May Powell. “Perhaps the fellow will try to rob you, just to get square for what he lost in the oil fields.”
The girls were also deep in their examinations, and as they had still some writing and studying to do the boys did not remain as long as they might otherwise have done. Returning to Colby Hall, they tried to dismiss Carson Davenport from their minds and pitch into the work that still remained to be done on their compositions.
So far Jack and Fred had done very well and each felt certain that up to that point he had scored at least ninety-five per cent. The twins were not so fortunate, but as Andy expressed it, “they hoped they hit the ninety mark, anyway.”
“Latin is what gets me,” groaned Andy. “Whoever wanted to invent such a beastly language, anyway? Why couldn’t they talk United States and be done with it?”
“It’s mathematics that’s my bugbear,” said his twin. “The fellow who got up square root and cube root in that science ought to be hung.”
“Just wait until I get through with these books,” went on Andy. “If they won’t make the most dandy bonfire you ever saw, then I’ll miss my guess.”
The one humble boy around Colby Hall those days was Henry Stowell. Following the incident connected with the explosion of the cannon the sneak had not appeared for several days in the classrooms. When he did show up he had little to say and he did his best to avoid the Rovers.