"Perhaps, being a walking shoe, it walked off."
"Maybe it got in that beefsteak we had this morning," put in Sam, with a wink. "I thought that steak was rather tough."
"Shoo yourself with such a joke, Sam," came from Fred Garrison.
"Have you really lost your shoe, Tubby, dear?" sang out Songbird Powell, the so-styled "poet" of the academy. And then he started to sing:
"Rub a dub dub!
One shoe on the Tubb!
Where can the other one be?
Look in your bunk
And look in your trunk,
And look in the bumble-bee tree!"
"Whoop! hurrah! Songbird has composed another ode in Washtub's honor," sang out Fred Garrison. "Washtub, you ought to give Songbird a dollar for that."
"Thanks, but I make not my odes for filthy lucre," same from Powell, tragically, and then he continued:
"One penny reward,
And a big tin sword,
To whoever finds the shoe.
Come one at a time,
And form in line,
And raise a hullabaloo!"
And then a shout went up that could be heard all over the encampment.
"I'll lend you a slipper, Tubbs," said little Harry Moss, whose shoes were several sizes smaller than those of the aristocratic cadet.