“So am I,” admitted Joe, as he watched the carriage containing Mr. Benjamin drive off. “I’d like some good hot lemonade.”
The fire now held little attraction for our friends and they hastened back to the dormitory, Joe explaining on the way how he had unexpectedly rescued a former enemy of his father’s.
“And aren’t you going to send some word home about that warning he gave you?” asked Tom, as Joe finished. “That Holdney scoundrel may be working his scheme now.”
“Oh, yes, sure. I’m going to write to dad as soon as we get back to our room. Sure I’m going to warn him. I’m mighty sorry for Mr. Benjamin. He’s a smart man, but he went wrong, and now he’s down and out, as he says. But he did me a good service.”
“It doesn’t even things up!” spoke Teeter. “He surely would have been a gone one but for you.”
“Oh, some one else might have thought of that way of getting him down if I hadn’t,” replied Joe modestly. “I remember a story I read in one of the books I had when I was a kid. A fellow was on a high chimney, and a rope he had used to haul himself up slipped down. A big crowd gathered and no one knew how to help him. His wife came to bring his dinner and she got onto a scheme right away.
“‘Hey, John!’ she called ‘unravel your sock. Begin at the toe!’ You see he had on knitted socks. Well, he unravelled one, got a nice long piece of yarn and lowered it to the ground. He tied on his knife, or something for a weight. Then they fastened a cord to the yarn, and a rope to the cord, he pulled the rope up and got down off the chimney.”
“Your process, only reversed,” commented Tom. “I say fellows,” he added, “let’s run and get warmed up. I’m shivering.”
“It was warm enough back there at the fire,” said Teeter, as he looked to where the blaze was now dying out for lack of material on which to feed.
“Beastly mean of Hiram and Luke,” commented Peaches. “They’re getting scared I guess. I hope we get ’em out of the nine before the season’s over.”