“If anybody should ask me, I would say you had a queer way of cleaning house, Codfish,” remarked Fred calmly.
“And to think he stole one of the codfish from the pantry!” said Jack. “By the way it smells, he must have taken it the day he enrolled here.”
“Maybe he likes codfish good and strong,” suggested Gif.
“I’ll ‘codfish’ you fellows if you don’t leave me alone!” howled the sneak. He was so vexed he almost felt like crying. “You just wait till Colonel Colby or Captain Dale hears about this!”
“Yes, I wonder what the colonel will say when he finds out you stole one of the codfish belonging to the school,” said Andy. “You oughtn’t to have done it, Henry, my boy. If you wanted anything to eat, why didn’t you ask one of the teachers for it?”
“Maybe he chews on codfish in the middle of the night when he can’t sleep, or when he is trying to solve a problem in algebra,” suggested Randy.
“I don’t do any such thing, and I didn’t take that codfish from the pantry, and you know it!” howled Codfish, in anger. “It’s a put-up job, and you are the fellows who did it! All of you ought to be sent away from this school.”
“If he took a codfish, maybe he took some other things, too,” said Jack. “I think this ought to be investigated.”
“And how did you happen to get all these boxes?” demanded Fred. “I know them. They were collected for the bonfire some days ago.”
“You certainly have no right to have them in your room, Codfish,” said Gif. “Better hustle ’em down and put ’em on the fire before the rest of the fellows hear of this.”