"I wouldn't like to do that," answered Roy, shaking his head.
"No more would I," answered Chub, "but I'd do it if I was just a little more certain that the thing was in there. I'd like to bust it open with an axe," he added savagely.
Then the two o'clock bell rang and they hurried downstairs.
"Keep mum about it," said Chub, "and we'll get to the bottom of it yet."
"The trunk?" asked Roy with a weak effort at humor.
"You bet!" was the answer.
Roy watched practice that afternoon. He stood on the school side of the hedge which marked inner bounds and, out of sight himself, saw Patten playing on first. It was lonely work and after a while the figures on the green diamond grew blurred and misty. Then, suddenly, Brother Laurence's advice came back to him and Roy brushed the back of his hand across his eyes and turned away.
"'When you're down on your luck,'" he murmured, "'Grin as hard as you can grin.'"
So he tried his best to grin, and made rather a sorry affair of it until he spied Harry walking toward the tennis courts with her racket in hand. He hailed her and she waited for him to come up.
"I'm awfully sorry, Roy," she greeted him. "I told dad you didn't do it."