“It doesn’t give you a chance to catch your breath,” went on the football captain. “Always seems to want you to hurry-up.”
“I wish it would make Sid hurry-up some mornings, when the chapel bell rings,” remarked Tom. “The frowsy old misogynist—the troglodyte—lies abed until the last minute. It would take more than that clock to get him up.”
“Slanderer!” crooned Sid, unconcernedly, from the depths of the sofa.
“No, but seriously,” went on Dan. “I can’t see how you stand it. It gives me the fidgets. It seems to say ‘hurry-up—hurry-up—hurry-up—no-time—no-time—no-time’! Jove! I’d get one of those old Grandfather clocks, if I were you. The kind that reminds one of an open fire, in a gloomy old library, with a nice book, and ticking away like this: ‘tick——tock—tick——tock.’ That’s the kind of a clock to have. But that monstrosity——”
He simulated a shudder, and turned up his coat collar as if a wind was blowing down his back.
“Oh, you’re just nervous worrying about what’s going to happen to the football team,” spoke Phil. “Cheer up, old man, the worst is yet to come. Suppose you’d been robbed of the finest armchair that ever you sat in——”
“Finest fiddlesticks!” burst out Dan. “That chair had spinal meningitis, I guess, or the dink-bots. Every time you sat in it you could tell how many springs there were in the seat and back without counting. Ugh!” and Dan rubbed his spine reflectively.
“But it’s gone,” went on Tom, “and I’d give a five-spot to know who took it. Come on, fellows, let’s go scouting around and see if we can get on the trail of it. I’m glad they didn’t take the clock or the sofa,” and he gazed at the two remaining articles which formed the most cherished possessions of the inseparables. They had acquired the clock, chair and sofa some time before, purchasing them from a former student on the occasion of their becoming roommates, and though they had since secured many new objects of virtu, their affections clung to these three originals.
Their room was a typical college lads’ apartment, hung with sporting prints, boxing gloves, foils, masks, baseball bats, fishing rods, and in certain places, like honored shrines, were the pictures of pretty girls.
“Well, are you fellows coming?” asked Tom, as he started for the door.