Ned chortled. Laurie, although he wanted to smile, kept a straight face.
“Of course,” he agreed, “I might do that. Well, I’ll do it, though I’ll feel like a perfect ass when I speak to Pinky about it.”
“There,” said Polly in triumph. “I knew we could do something if we all put our heads together! And I do hope it will be all right. Kewpie’s really a very dear boy, and he certainly did wonderfully at football last fall and he’s just got to keep on. I do think, though, that we should keep this quite to ourselves, don’t you, Ned?”
“Don’t just see how we can. If Kewpie gets on the baseball squad he’s almost sure to know something about it. He’s not such a fool as he looks sometimes, Polly.”
Polly stared. “I don’t see—” she began. Then the twinkle in Ned’s eye explained. “Of course I didn’t mean that, silly! I meant that Kewpie shouldn’t know that we—that we’d been discussing him and that we had—well, conspired, Ned. Don’t you see? He might resent it or something.”
“I get you! We’ll make a secret society out of it, eh? Association for the Restoration—no, that won’t do.”
“Advancement,” suggested Mae.
“Association for the Reclamation of Kewpie Proudtree!” pronounced Ned. “And the password—”
“Association for the Degradation of Laurence Turner, you mean,” said Laurie dejectedly. “And there isn’t any password, because he won’t pass!”
“All right,” agreed Ned. “But the dues are twenty cents. Here you are, Polly. You’ve got ‘treasurer’ written all over you.”