“What now?” asked Tom.
“Oh, he put me through a course of sprouts for further orders this afternoon,” explained Sid. “Thought he’d catch me, but I managed to wiggle through. Nearly gave me heart disease, though, for fear I’d have to be out of the game to-morrow. But I managed to save myself, much to the surprise of Pitchfork. Now I want my revenge on him.”
“What can you do?”
“I don’t know—nothing, I guess. I wish—hold on!” Sid struck a thoughtful attitude, looked fixedly at the floor, then at the ceiling, and finally cried: “Eureka!”
“Has some one been playing hob with your crown?” asked Tom, referring to the exclamation said to have been made by the ancient king, when he discovered, in his bath, a means of finding out if his jeweler had cheated him.
“No, but I’ve found a way to get even with Pitchfork.”
“How?”
“Listen, and I will a tale unfold—a spike-tail at that. When I was coming in from recitation, disgusted with life in general, and with the Roman view of it, particularly, I met Wallops the messenger. He had a bundle under his arm, and you know what a talker he is. Confided to me that he was taking Pitchfork’s best suit to the tailor’s to be pressed, and his dress-suit to have new buttons put on, and some other fixings done. Pitchfork is going to a swell reception to-night, and will wear his glad rags. All he has now is his classroom suit, and you know what that is—all chalk and chemical stains when he goes into the laboratory once in a while on the relief shift.”
“I don’t seem to follow you.”