“Here you are, Lingard. Twenty-five cents. Much obliged. Will you come for these or shall I leave them in your room?”
“I’ll come and get them, thanks, Tucker. To-morrow evening, you said?”
“Yes, any time after nine. Good-night.”
Lingard went off and Toby, after draping the garments on a hanger, turned out his light and padded downstairs to see Arnold. It was against the rules to use any cleansing fluid in the buildings after dark and so Toby’s cleansing operations had to be done in the daytime. He found Arnold and Homer playing host to Fanning and Halliday. There was a box of biscuits open on the window-seat and Homer had fashioned a pitcherful of orange-colored liquid which the fellows were drinking from glasses and tooth-mugs. Homer kept an assortment of bottled fruit-juices and could be relied on to produce a sweet and sickening beverage at a moment’s notice. Toby declined the mugful of “Wilkins’ Orange Nectar” offered him, but helped himself to the biscuits and made himself as comfortable as he could on Arnold’s bed.
“Don’t get the crumbs in there, for the love of lemons,” warned Arnold. “I never could sleep comfortably on cracker crumbs.”
Homer chuckled. “Say, Arn, remember the time we filled Garfield’s bed with crackers? Gee, that was a riot!”
“What was it?” prompted Ted Halliday, holding out his glass for more “nectar.”
“Why, Garfield got fresh one time,” recounted Arnold, “and came in here when we were out and pied the room. It was an awful mess when I got back. He had turned all the pictures around, and stuffed a suit of Homer’s clothes with pillows and put it in my bed, and—oh, just raised Cain generally. He thought he was awfully funny, I guess. You remember him, Fan?”
Fanning nodded, but Halliday looked blank.