"Makes me sick," agreed Grain.
"Positively nauseating to hear Old Man Wykeham puffing 'em up sky-high," said Niblo. "Special holiday in their honour, indeed!"
"I vote we all stick in the class-room and swot that day, just to show our contempt for it," suggested Vinns, a boy with a rather uncanny gift for mathematics—the only Squirm who had ever distinguished himself in a scholastic way.
"Swot yourself, Professor Vinns," snorted Grain. "I'd swop all my school-books for a penny bag of popcorn. Time to wonder how to spend the holiday when it comes. Just now, I'm waiting to hear 'Body's plan for wiping Arkness's eye."
"It's this," said Osbody. "Half the Merry Men (as they have the cheek to call themselves) scarcely know one end of a chess-board from another. Dominoes are just slabs of wood to them. Draughts make them shiver."
"Granting all that," said Niblo, "I don't see what you're driving at."
"Well, we all want to take Robin's conceited 'crush' down a peg, I guess?"
"Rather! Aching for the chance."
"Then it's yours for the asking. Not to make a song of it, I've written something on a sheet of paper which, if you're all agreeable, I shall send to Arkness to-night. Listen, and I'll read it."
He smoothed out a sheet of foolscap, cleared his throat, and began: