“Well, what do you think of that?” was all Hike could say. “You got it all up. Say, young man, I don’t know whether I ought to drop you out of the window or give you a prize.”
“Let’s compromise it, and get some sleep!” suggested Poodle.
CHAPTER XIX
AVIATING AGAIN!
The coach of the Santa Benicia team was talking to Hike, after practise:
“Look here, Griffin, what’s the trouble between you and the team? Looks to me as if they are still jealous of you for your aviating, and trying to show they’re as good as you are. Breaks up team-play pretty badly. What have you got to suggest!”
“I don’t know. I’ve been worrying over it. I’ll see what I can do,” said Hike, gloomily.
It was two weeks after the Great Hazing and now, though all the open “kidding” had stopped, there was still trouble. Hike was afraid that he might have to resign from the team, for the team’s sake, though he would rather have cut off his head.
He wandered up to Lieutenant Adeler’s room, worrying. He passed Sea Lion Rogers, who hailed him, “O Hike, got a minute!”
“No!” shouted Hike, and hurried on. Sea Lion Rogers was probably called that because he was so smooth that he could have slid through water like a seal. He was the son of a millionaire; he had traveled everywhere; he had manners like those of a duke in a play; and he always sneered. His chief amusement, these days, was to come up to Hike and ask some impossible question about aviation with the polished, courteous, smiling way which was more maddening than any “kidding.” He was another thing that Hike had to settle—especially as some of the others were trying to imitate Rogers in this new sort of “kidding.”
If he could only give the other members of the team a chance to aviate—well, why couldn’t he?