“Take me up?” Alf insisted.
“What’s the good? You’ll never get the chance to try.”
“All right; then you’re safe? Bet me?”
“Yes, I’ll bet you.” Joe smiled pityingly at the others. “You may know something about football and hockey, Alf, but you couldn’t write a two-line paragraph that The Scholiast would publish.”
After which parting fling, Joe nodded to the rest and took his leave. As the door closed behind him Alf chuckled with wicked glee.
“Got a fall out of him, though, didn’t I? He’s a chesty youth, is Joe.”
“What did you want to rag him so for?” inquired Dan, who, while he had enjoyed the hostilities, didn’t quite approve. Alf shrugged his shoulders.
“Oh, I don’t know. Felt like it, I suppose. Joe sort of got on my nerves to-night. He’s such a know-it-all. I really like him, but it does him a heap of good to be taken down a few pegs now and then. Besides, what I said was true. He fills that sheet up with a lot of the dullest, stalest, messiest old trash I ever read.”
“Well, there isn’t much to publish, I guess,” murmured Tom. “He does the best he can, most probably.”
Alf made no response. He was gazing fixedly at the flames in the grate. Dan pulled himself out of his chair and found his cap.