“What sort of a line?” asked Willard, pushing his book away and tilting perilously back in his chair. “What do you mean, line?”
“Photography,” replied Martin. “I met him over in Bagdad a few minutes ago taking pictures of the stores. It’s colder than the dickens, but all he had on was a muffler around his neck.”
“What!”
“Don’t play the goat. You know what I mean. He looked awfully funny, standing there winding up his little camera in the middle of the street, with the wind blowing a gale!”
“What’s he photographing the stores for?” asked Willard, puzzled.
“Search me! Some new science, I guess. He’s a queer one. Coming to dinner?”
Friday was still cold and windy, with leaden skies, and after the team had run through signals for a quarter of an hour and the backs had punted and caught a few times, the players were hustled back to the gymnasium and straw was spread over the gridiron in case of a freeze.
The excitement and suspense that held the whole school that day affected Willard so that studying was an impossibility. About five, as Martin had gone over to Lykes to get Eustace Ross to help him with his algebra, Willard gave up the attempt to study and, pulling on a sweater, wandered across to Upton. Number 49 held only young Fuller, however. “Felix went out early,” he said in reply to Willard’s inquiry. “About two o’clock I think it was. I guess he’s photographing.” The boy scowled. “That’s his latest. He develops the pictures himself, too.” He nodded at several trays and bottles that claimed a corner of the table. “This is a rotten hole to live in when he gets to messing with chemicals. Some day I’ll be blown through the roof, I dare say.”
“I don’t think photographing chemicals are explosive,” responded Willard soothingly.