“Hal-lo!” he cried. “What brought you back here?”
“It is a long story,” answered the chairman. “Will you let us come in and talk to you for a few minutes?”
Mr. Colson at once got up and opened the door; and when Blake and his two friends walked into the office, and he saw what a condition their boots and uniforms were in, he knew that something had gone wrong with them. He had had some slight suspicion before, and now a light dawned upon him all at once, and he understood the matter as well as he did after it was explained to him.
“Blake,” said he, as he locked the door and pulled down the window-shutter, thus making sure of an uninterrupted interview, “you have lost your dinner.”
“We are painfully aware of the fact, Mr. Colson,” replied the chairman, with an attempt at pleasantry; “and we should be much obliged to you if you would tell us how it happened.”
“All I know about it is this,” replied the gentleman, and the members of the committee were greatly relieved to see that he showed not the slightest disposition to laugh at them. “You will remember that your secretary wrote to me, saying that the class was satisfied with what you three did the last time you were down here, and that if you thought it best to make any changes you would notify me by a committee, and not by letter. Well, last night a couple of young fellows came to me and said that they had been sent to say that the crowd wouldn’t want my hall to-night—that for class reasons, which they were obliged to keep secret, they had decided to eat the dinner in Bordentown. They told Taylor the same thing about the dinner, and ordered him to pack it up and have it at the transfer-depot by the time the lightning express came in.”
“The impudent scoundrels!” exclaimed White, while Forester brought his clenched fist down into his open palm with a report like that of a pistol.
“If they were not authorized to act for your class they were pretty cheeky, that’s a fact,” assented Mr. Colson.
“They were authorized to act for nobody,” said Forester, hotly. “They’re a lot of robbers. They bamboozled you and Mr. Taylor completely.”
“I know they did; but you can readily see that Taylor and I are in no way to blame for that. We are not acquainted with more than a dozen boys in your class, and although we thought it rather strange that you should suddenly make up your minds to go to so lonely a place as Bordentown to eat your dinner, we asked no questions, because we did not want it to appear that we were trying to pry into school-boy secrets.”