If your arms are the wings of an aeroplane, how can you use the hands that are so inconveniently stuck way out there at the end of those arms, to manage levers?
He was just deciding that, perhaps, after all, according to the practise of the best aeroplane-builders, coat-tails, and not arms, are planes, when he heard a sound within the cabin.
He was startled. There was a mumbling, kept up for some time, and accompanied by a low pounding on wood.
Left Ear promptly became Sherlock Holmes. Dragging Dr. Watson along, he sneaked about to the back of the cabin and looked in through a little window.
There stood Poodle Darby, by a wooden kitchen-table, reading aloud from a sheet of paper, and keeping time by tapping on the table!
The room was bare, except for the table, a chair, and many papers.
Left Ear gleefully chortled to himself. “So here’s where you come when you want to write poetry for the school mag., is it, Mr. Poodle? You think you will keep us away, do you? You think you will get in poetries on us, do you?”
By this time he was running down the hill side, too busy even to be an aeroplane.
He gathered the first four Sophomores whom he met in the Yard, explained to them in a gasping yelp the awful thing Poodle was doing, and the five started on the dogtrot for the shack on Bilbunet Hill.
As they edged up to the window, Poodle was in the midst of reading the poem all over again, after having rewritten a couple of lines. He read it loudly and clearly. He must have liked it, for the joyous listeners outside heard him declare, “Say, that ain’t half bad!”