“No. I guess he’s over to the new room. He took his books and left some time ago. Maybe he’s studying.”
“Not much!” exclaimed Phil. “I wish he’d come and help move. Some of this stuff is his.”
“Most of it is. I’m glad you’re going to help, or I’d never have the courage to shift. Well, let’s get the sofa fixed. I doubt if we can make it hold together, though.”
“Yes, we can. I’ll show you.”
Phil went to work in earnest. He was an athletic-looking chap, of generous size, and one of the best runners at Randall College. He was one of Tom Parson’s particular chums, the other being Sidney Henderson. Tom and Sid, of whom more will be told presently, had roomed together during their freshman year at Randall, and Phil’s apartment was not far away. Toward the close of the term the three boys were much together, Phil spending more time in the room of Tom and Sid than he did in his own. In this way he became very much attached to the old chair and sofa, which formed two of the choicest possessions of the lads.
With the opening of the new term, when the freshmen had become more or less dignified sophomores, Phil had proposed that he and his two chums shift to a large room in the west dormitory, where the majority of the sophomores and juniors lived. His plan was enthusiastically adopted by Sid and Tom, and, as soon as they had arrived at college, ready for the beginning of the term, moving day had been instituted. But Sid, after helping Tom get their possessions in a pile in the middle of the room they were about to leave, had disappeared, and Phil, enthusiastic about getting his two best friends into an apartment with him, had come over to aid Tom.
“Now, you see,” went on Phil, “I’ll nail this board along the front edge of the sofa—so.”
“But don’t you think, old chap—and I know you’ll excuse my mentioning it,” said Tom—“don’t you think that it rather spoils, well, we’ll say the artistic beauty of it?”
“Artistic fiddlesticks!” exclaimed Phil. “Of course it does! But it’s the only way to hold it together.”
“One could, I suppose, put a sort of drapery—flounce, I believe, is the proper word—over it,” went on Tom. “That would hide the unsightly board.”