“Catch ’em,” answered Jonesie. “Perkins has four traps set under his stable now. And we tied Ace up so he wouldn’t butt in. Oh, we’ll have rats enough in a day or two! Don’t you say anything about it, Sparrow. If you do you won’t be there! Also, we’ll knock your block off!”
“Like to see you do it,” growled Sparrow. “Or a dozen fellows like you! Domineering kid!” he added as the door closed behind the others. He picked up the paper-covered novel he had been reading, replaced his feet on the radiator and scowled darkly. “Good mind to put faculty on,” he muttered resentfully. A grin overspread his thin face. “My word,” he chuckled, “that would be a lark!”
III
Dear Reader, have you ever personally conducted five active and anxious rats across a campus inhabited by hostile faculties at nine o’clock at night? If so, you will properly appreciate the difficulties that beset Jonesie, Pinky and Tubby Bumstead. Unfortunately Perkins’s stable lay to the west of the school and Steve Cook was domiciled directly to the east and the campus lay between. To have made a detour would have added some eight or nine blocks to the journey. Hence it was decided that in this case a straight line between two points was not only the shortest but wisest course. With the rats confined in two wire cages, which were in turn wrapped in oat bags, and Ace wriggling excitedly in Jonesie’s arms, only partly hidden by another sack, the three conspirators crossed the campus, keeping to the darker paths and avoiding buildings as far as possible. They walked hurriedly but yet cautiously, and as they proceeded strange sounds escaped from beneath the enfolding bags, sounds that, had they been heard by a faculty member, would undoubtedly have occasioned curiosity. Now it is a well-known fact that faculties are the most curious persons in the wide, wide world; always introducing their noses into other people’s affairs, always athirst for knowledge that can profit them but little. Consequently the three boys were extremely desirous, not to say anxious, that their progress should go unnoticed. So much so, in fact, that more than once the sight of a suspicious figure across the yard caused them to pause in the shadow of a tree or building and, in a silence broken only by the agitated squeals of the rats and the excited and stertorous breathing of Ace, await the disappearance of the dim and uncertain form. There were many anxious moments during that passage of the enemy’s country, but in the end sheer audacity won and they climbed the further fence—there were obvious reasons why gateways were to be avoided—and hurried across into the gloom of a side street. From there on it was plainer sailing. One or two townsfolk, having passed the trio, turned to peer suspiciously after them, but no one challenged. At Mrs. Sharp’s luck again befriended them. When they opened the front door the hall was empty and six leaps took them up the stairs, from the summit of which they gained Steve’s room without detection.
The apartment presented a strangely altered appearance. The furniture had been moved against the walls, leaving the center of the room carpeted with a worn and stained straw-matting, clear and unobstructed. Occupying points of vantage atop the desk and the bureau and strung out along the window-seat, was the audience. The audience, representative patrons of sport from the Upper and Lower Middle classes of Randall’s School, greeted the arrival of the trio with unrestrained delight, so unrestrained that Jonesie harshly instructed them to “cut it out!”
“Let’s see ’em,” begged Steve and Chick Allen, and the audience climbed down from their reserved seats and clustered about while Pinky and Tubby proudly removed the wrappings and exhibited five badly frightened rats.
“Gee,” said Pill Farnham dubiously, “they aren’t very big, are they? I thought——”
“You thought they were racoons,” interrupted Jonesie scathingly. “They’re big enough; don’t you worry. Look at that old gray fellow. Bet you he will put up a peach of a fight!”