Poor Slim! He showed his disappointment in every look and every action.
"What kind of a book did you see it in?" asked Jerry, in a tone almost as sad as Slim's.
"In the manual," Slim groaned. "Herb Wallace showed it to me."
"That settles it," exclaimed Joe. "If Herb Wallace had a hand in it anywhere there's something wrong. I'll tell you what we'll do, fellows. We'll go and ask the headmaster."
Now the headmaster of Brighton had once been a boy himself. He could be stern, even cruelly severe, when occasion demanded, but he was kind of heart and broad of understanding.
Before him the three lads laid their case, as before the final tribunal.
"H'm," said he, when all the details had been related and the all-important information asked. "You say Herbert Wallace showed you this in a manual?"
Slim solemnly affirmed that that was the case.
The headmaster pushed a button on the side of his desk and in a few seconds his secretary, a big, bluff fellow, appeared.
"Bring Herbert Wallace here at once," said the headmaster. And in five more minutes, while the headmaster was shrewdly questioning the three lads as to the seriousness of their determination to enlist, the secretary returned, accompanied by young Wallace, flushed and shamefaced.