“I’m jiggered if I see why it should look like that. Even with the fellows’ things, it isn’t half as full as it was when I came from home, and it didn’t cut up like that.”
The Easter holidays were approaching, and “the three guardsmen” had received a most cordial invitation from Mr. Hollis to spend them with him at his home.
Feeling the strain of the baseball season, the fellows were only too glad of a short breathing spell and had gratefully accepted the invitation. They were looking forward with eager anticipation to the visit.
They would not need very much luggage for just a few days’ stay, so, as Tom owned a small steamer trunk, they had decided to make it serve for all three. The fellows had brought their things in the night before and left Tom to pack them.
Tom had heard people say that packing a trunk was a work of time, and had congratulated himself on the quickness and ease with which that particular trunk was packed; but when he encountered the almost human obstinacy with which that lid resisted his utmost efforts, he acknowledged that it wasn’t “such a cinch after all.”
After one more ineffectual effort to close it, he again eyed it disgustedly.
“I can’t do a blamed thing with it,” he growled, and then catching the sound of voices in Dick’s room overhead, he shouted:
“Come on in here, fellows, and help me get this apology for a trunk shut.”
When Dick and Bert reached him, Tom was stretched almost full length on the trunk and raining disgusted blows in the region of the lock.
He looked so absurdly funny that the fellows executed a war dance of delight and roared with laughter, and then proceeded to drag Tom bodily off the trunk.