“Geewhillikins! Where’s the afternoon got to? Here, I’ll knock this window seat together and then beat it. Where’s that hammer? Don’t tell me—Oh, all right! Toss it over. Nails? Thank you, sir. Now then, you rickety, tumble-down, lob-sided bunch of boards, how do you go, anyhow? I say, Rowland, there’s a leg missing! I didn’t notice that, did you? Never mind. It won’t matter if you don’t sit on that corner, and some time you can nail a piece of board on there. Say, this thing is a regular Chinese puzzle! Know what I think? Well, I think he’s gone and sold us parts of two different seats!”
But he wronged Mr. Jacobs, for ultimately the sections fitted together, and when they did the two boys looked at the result in silence and then burst into howls of laughter. The window seat had been built for a corner! No matter how they struggled with it it remained L-shaped! If half of it ran across a window the other half stuck out into the room at right angles like a sore thumb! Ira subsided on the bed and Mart sprawled himself on the floor and they laughed until they were weak.
“Well,” said Mart finally, “either you’ve got to change your room or this seat, and I guess the seat’s the easier. Now look here. If we turn this end around, so, and tack a couple of short boards on here——”
“Oh, don’t!” begged Ira. “Don’t spoil it! It—it’s beautiful!”
“Oh, well, if you won’t be serious,” laughed Mart, dropping his hammer. “Let’s leave it until tomorrow. I’ve got to meet Brad at five-twelve. Put your hat on and come along. Bring your trunk check, by the way. Hang it, quit laughing! Get a move on, you—you idjit!”
“Y-yes, but—but look at it, Johnston!” gasped Ira. “Isn’t it—funny?”
“It’s killing,” agreed the other, grinning. “I say, why not leave it that way just for a joke?”
“I—I’m going to! I—l-like it!”
“Well, don’t cry, old man! Pull yourself together! Here’s your hat. Now come on. We’ve only got eight minutes.”
The railway station was four blocks south and by the time Ira had arranged for the delivery of his trunk and rescued his suitcase from the parcel room those eight minutes were gone and the express was rumbling in. Mart left Ira at the waiting-room door, with instructions not to move until he returned, and was presently pushing his way through the throng of arriving students in search of his roommate. Ira, however, concluded that he would only be in the way. The chums would of course have lots to say to each other and he didn’t believe that either of them would really be any happier for his presence. So, before the new arrivals had more than overflowed the platform, he was on his way uptown again, the heavy suitcase, into which at the last moment he had forced a lot of things that had been intended for the trunk, tugging at his arm. Station carriages, filled to capacity with merry youths, began to pass him before he reached Main Street and turned toward his lodgings, but he saw nothing of Mart.