"Mr. Chair—I mean, Miss Chairman!"
It was Buck Claxton who interrupted. Very embarrassed he looked as he stood there, and very white, but very determined, too.
"Mr. Claxton," recognized Marion Genevieve Chester.
"Somebody did discover that trick," blurted Buck. "Rodman Cree did. He told me about it between quarters. That was why I knew what to expect. That—that's all." He sat down with an audible thump.
Very wisely, Professor Leland dismissed the subject with a brief, "Then we have something more for which to thank Cree," and turned to another subject. "Suppose we practice the Lakeville cheer now," he said. "Let's shake the rafters."
If the cheers inspired by the new leaders did not actually shake the rafters, it was because the school building was new and rigid. They echoed and re-echoed from basement to attic; they forced Marion Genevieve Chester to thrust hurried fingers into her aristocratic ears; they made you believe that Lakeville was the best and biggest and most loyal high school in all the world. In some mysterious way, everybody seemed to think he could help win the morrow's game by yelling just a little bit louder than his neighbor.
At the door, as they filed out, Bunny Payton stopped each member of the Black Eagle Patrol long enough to say, "Scout meeting at the club house to-night. Seven sharp. Be sure and come."
Roundy was the last to leave. "Seen Specs?" Bunny asked him. The patrol leader was not in Miss Seeby's nine-o'clock botany class and knew nothing of the morning incident. "H'm! Neither have I. That's funny. Well, don't forget the meeting."
Rodman Cree was not a Boy Scout, but Felix may have overlooked this point. Perhaps he realized that Rodman was worthy of his friendship, or perhaps it was merely the cap in the boy's hand that drew him like a magnet. Whatever the reason, at four that afternoon, when school was dismissed, Felix ran straight to Rodman and tried to tell him, in dog language, that something was wrong, and that it had to do with somebody connected with Specs' cap, which Rodman had observed hanging in the coatroom, although he knew its owner had not returned since his exile from Miss Seeby's botany class.
Felix nuzzled Rodman, yelped sharply and trotted away. When the dog saw that he was not followed, he came back again, very patient with the dull human who couldn't understand plain signs, and repeated his actions. But it was not till the third time that the boy began to get an inkling of the truth. Felix clinched the matter by sniffing at the cap held toward him, barking excitedly, and racing off at full speed.