“No, I’ve another scheme for that,” went on Teeter. “Show ’em, Peaches.”
Thereupon Peaches proceeded to extract the corks from the bottles of liquid refreshment. From the packages Teeter had brought he took some other corks. They had glass tubes through them, two tubes for each cork. And on one tube in each cork was a small rubber hose.
“There!” exclaimed Teeter as Peaches put the odd corks in the bottles. “We can pour out the pop with neatness and dispatch into our glasses and at the same time, should any one unexpectedly enter, why—we are only conducting an experiment in generating oxygen or hydrogen gas. The bottles are the retorts, and we can pretend our glasses are to receive the gas. How’s that?”
“All to the horse radish!” cried Joe in delight.
“Then proceed,” ordered Teeter with a laugh; and when all was in readiness each lad sat with a fake book near him, into which he could slip his piece of pie at a moment’s warning, while on the table stood the bottles of pop with the tubes and hose extending from their corks—truly a most scientific-looking array of flasks and glassware.
“Now let’s talk,” suggested Teeter, biting generously into a pie. “That was a great fight we had to-day, all right.”
“And there might have been one of a different kind,” added Peaches. “Hear anything more from Hiram, Joe?”
“No, I don’t expect to—until the next time, and then I suppose we’ll have it out.”
“I guess Joe’s goose is cooked as far as getting on the nine is concerned,” ventured Tom.