“Now, here’s another pretty mess,” said Enoch to his counselors. “I don’t mind fooling such fellows as the first-class boys, who hold that we have no rights that they are bound to respect, but when it comes to taking in a jolly lot like these firemen, I weaken. They have done the very best they could for us, and it would be nothing more than a civil thing on our part to ask them to help us eat the dinner.”
“I don’t see how we can get around it,” observed Endicott, while the others shook their heads and looked very solemn. Their actions and the expression of their faces seemed to say that it was a bad business altogether, and they wished they were well out of it.
“Neither do I,” said Enoch. “They will accept, of course, but none of our crowd will ever dare show their faces in Bordentown again.”
“Why couldn’t they have kept away and left us alone?” exclaimed Lester, pettishly.
“They could, but they didn’t; they’re here, and we’ve got to ask them to spend the evening with us. Let’s do it at once and be done with it.”
So saying, Enoch, accompanied by his three right-hand men, walked up to the foreman, and Endicott, who was a smooth-tongued fellow, formally invited him and his company to remain at the hotel as guests of the Bridgeport boys.
“We can promise you one of Mr. Taylor’s best dinners, but not much of an entertainment—not near as elaborate as it was intended to be,” said Endicott. “The programme was changed at the very last minute, and this dinner will not be as grand as class dinners usually are. We have brought the music with us, and perhaps it is not too late to get up an impromptu dance this evening, if you——”
Endicott suddenly paused, for the scowl he saw on Enoch’s face was dark and threatening. It told him in plain language that he was going altogether too far. The foreman did not see it, however, and he hastened to assure the boys that nothing would afford him greater pleasure; and as for the dance—why, that could be easily arranged. Country girls were always ready for such things, he said, and as they did not have as much fixing and fussing to go through with as city belles did, he and his men would undertake to fill the hall with them by eight o’clock that evening.
“Now you’ve done it,” exclaimed Enoch, as the foreman hurried away to tell his men about the hop that was to come off after the dinner had been disposed of. “Endicott, of all the blunderheads I ever saw, you are the beat.”
“Why, what’s the matter?” demanded the latter, who couldn’t see that he had done anything out of the way. “We can’t get any deeper into the mud than we are now, and we might as well have all the fun we can to-night, for it will be a long time before we shall have another chance. To-morrow we shall be called upon to settle with the fiddler.”