Andy had flushed angrily at the sight of the boys and seemed about to indulge in his usual bluster, but a thought appeared to come to him suddenly that made him change his mind.
“How are you, fellows?” he asked, in a way that 198 was meant to be ingratiating, and holding out his hand.
The movement was so wholly unexpected that for an instant the boys hardly knew what to do. They all disliked him heartily, and the Rushton boys in particular had been bitterly wronged by him during their first year at Rally Hall. Still, it would have seemed ungracious to reject the proffered hand, so they took it under protest, mentally resolved to get away from him as soon as possible.
It was a different Andy from the one to whom they had been accustomed. He had formerly been expensively dressed, and had borne himself with the arrogance of the snob and the brutality of the bully. Now he was beginning to look shabby and his eyes had a furtive look very different from the insolent assurance that the boys remembered.
They exchanged a few commonplace remarks, and then, as Andy made no move toward following Sid, who had excused himself and gone on, Bill finally gave him a gentle hint.
“Well, so long, Andy,” he said. “We’ll have to be going.”
Then the motive for Andy’s sudden change of front became apparent.
“Wait just a minute,” he said rather sheepishly. “Will you fellows do me a favor and lend me a five spot? I’m stony broke–not a dime to bless myself with. You know the governor has gone 199 back on me. Says he won’t give me a red cent, and that I’ll have to learn to hoe my own row. I’m up against it for fair, and I know you fellows won’t mind lending me a little something. I’ll pay it back as soon as the old man comes across, which he’s bound to do sooner or later. What do you say?”
Fred, who remembered how the bully had tried to put on him the theft of some examination papers at Rally Hall, hesitated, but Teddy, who noticed how shabby and downcast Andy looked, intervened.
“I guess we might fix it up,” he ventured to say. “Just let me speak to the others for a minute.”