“Please desist,” I said. “We really can’t put our minds on this when you’re talking.”
Lamar grinned and started to whistle softly. After a minute Pug said: “You win, Lon. Care to try another?” I was about to say yes when Lamar jumped up and lifted the board from between us and tossed it on my bed.
“You really mustn’t,” he said. “You fellows will overwork your brains. Besides, I want to talk.”
Pug was quite sharp with him, but he didn’t seem to mind. He began talking about hockey. It seemed that there had been a call for hockey candidates and he had decided to report the next day. “Of course,” he explained, “there won’t be anything but gymnasium work until after the holidays, and I don’t suppose I can wear skates in the gym, but just the same I’d feel a lot better if I had a pair of the things. It might help me to get the atmosphere, eh?”
I said I didn’t see the necessity, and asked him if he had played much hockey.
“Hockey?” he laughed. “I don’t even know what it’s like! All I do know is that you play it on ice, wearing skates and waving a sort of golf club at a ball.”
“Puck,” corrected Pug, still haughty.
“Come again?”
“I said ‘puck,’” replied Pug. “You don’t use a ball, but a hard rubber disk called a ‘puck.’”
“Oh, I see. Much obliged, Pug. You whack it through a sort of goal, eh?”