“I don’t blame you any,” chuckled Rod Grant. “Take my advice and seek seclusion and shelter in the swamps of the Narragansetts. You were a bum redskin, anyhow. You gents had a heap of fun, didn’t you? But you always want to remember that the fellow who laughs last laughs best. It’s my turn now, and I’m enjoying it a plenty. You ought to see yourselves. You’re the cheapest looking aggregation of hazers I ever beheld. Some of you appear sick enough to have a doctor.”
This was true; without exception, they all wore a silly, shamed expression.
The sudden sounding of the last bell came as welcome relief, and they lost no time about hustling indoors, followed more leisurely by Grant and Stone, the former continuing to cast jibes after them.
During the morning session the boys were given time to think the whole matter over, and with the coming of a calm realization that they had been not only checkmated but completely hoist on their own petard, their chagrin was intensified. Occasionally one of them would steal a sly glance toward Rod Grant, but whoever did so was almost certain to meet the chaffing, derisive gaze of the boy from Texas. Some made secret vows of vengeance, while others were more inclined to “own the corn” and acknowledge themselves outwitted. What they now dreaded more than anything else was the stinging tongue and pitiless badinage of the new boy.
At intermission they held a secret conclave, at which a few betrayed their continued rawness in the face of advice from others to swallow the medicine, bitter though it was, and make the best of it.
“I tell yeou, fellers,” said Sile Crane, “after due consideration, I’m sorter inclined to own right up before Grant that he come it over us mighty slick. We started aout to have haydoo-gins of fun with him, but before we got through he made us look like a cage of monkeys, and that’s all there is to it. I snum, I think ’twas pretty clever of him.”
“Bah!” growled Hunk Rollins. “If you want to lay down and let him use you for a foot-mat, go ahead. I don’t feel that way, and I don’t propose to do it. He’s been shown up as a case of bluff. He hasn’t got the nerve to fight, nor even to play football. Are we going to let that sort of a feller crow over us?”
“I’ve got an idee,” said Crane slowly, “that Rod Grant ain’t lackin’ in nerve. No feller could ’a’ stood what he did last night, bein’ chucked into a dark room with a real skeleton that had been rubbed over with phosphorus, and then fooled the bunch of us by makin’ b’lieve he was crazy, unless he had pretty good nerve. He’s refused to play football, and mebbe he won’t fight; but I cal’late the chap that keeps treadin’ on the tail of his co’t is goin’ to run up against a s’prise party some day. Bimeby he’ll wake up and break loose, and when he does there’ll be some doings.”
Returning to the academy after dinner, Chipper Cooper found a number of the boys still talking about Grant.
“Say,” cried Cooper, “you can’t guess who called me up over the long distance ten minutes ago.”