And when that day arrived, fully a carload entrained at the Hill station of the C. K. & M. Railroad, bound for the neighboring city. These were all the girls of Central High interested in the game and their friends among the boys.
It was not a long run by train to Keyport, but they had a lot of fun. Chet and Lance were full of an incident that had occurred in Professor Dimp’s class that morning, and Chet was telling his sister and a group of friends about it.
“Short and Long got one on Old Dimple again to-day,” said Chet. “You know he’s forever hammering the Romans into us. We ought to call him ‘The Old Roman’—we really had! There’s that Roman lad who was such an athlete and all-around pug——”
“‘Pug!’” gasped Laura. “Wait till mother hears you say that.”
“Ha! I’m going to watch to see that she doesn’t hear me, Sis,” returned her brother. “Well, Old Dimple was telling us about this lad who used to swim across the Tiber three times before breakfast. And when he’d expatiated on the old boy’s performance, Short and Long put up a mitt——”
“‘A mitt!’” groaned Laura again.
“Aw, well! His hand, then. Dimple perked right up, thinking that Short and Long was really showing some interest, and says he:
“‘What’s your question, Mr. Long?’
“And Billy says: ‘What’s puzzling me, is why he swam it three times?’”
“‘Eh?’ says Dimple. ‘How’s that, young man?’”