“No,” said Dan, faintly, “—can’t. I’ve taken the pledge.”
“Pooh! Don’t be a fool, boy, when you’re sick!”
“Wouldn’t touch it if I were dying,” said Dan. “I’m getting better now, anyhow. My, but I felt queer for a while! It is so hot and stuffy below. No more packing in on a shelf for me. I’ll stick it out here until morning.”
“And the others,—the little chap who was with you?” the stranger asked hastily. “Is he—he sick, too?”
“Freddy Neville? Yes, dead sick; but Brother Bart is looking out for him. Brother Bart is a regular old softy about Freddy. He took him when he was a little kid and keeps babying him yet.”
“He is good to him, you mean?” asked the other, eagerly.
“Good? Well, I suppose you’d call it good. I couldn’t stand any such fussing. Why, when Fred got a tumble in the gym the other day the old man almost had a fit!”
“A tumble,—a fall; did it hurt him much?” There was a strange sharpness in the questioner’s voice.
“Pooh, no!” said Dan. “Just knocked him out a little. But we were all getting into trouble at Saint Andrew’s, for vacation there is pretty slow; so Father Regan has sent us off to the seashore for the summer?”
“The seashore? Where?”