“Buck made a good jump yesterday, Tim,” says another. “Five feet and half an inch.”
“Sure it wasn’t three-quarters of an inch?” is Tim’s provoking answer.
Of all irritating things, perhaps the most irritating is to have your big bundle of news calmly opened and emptied, and its contents appropriated without scruple or acknowledgment.
Tim this very day has the gratification of amazing half the school with the news of Dr Grinder’s approaching marriage and the consequent extra holidays, and of seeing the enthusiastic astonishment of others to whom he retails the latest achievement of the athletic Buck.
But he did not always come off so easily. Once he was made the victim of a joke which, in any one less self-satisfied, might have effectually checked his foolish propensity. It was a wet day, and the boys were all assembled in the big play-room, not knowing exactly what to do, and ready for the first bit of fun which might turn up.
“Couldn’t somebody draw Tim out?” one of us whispered.
The idea caught like wildfire, and after a brief pause Tidswell, the monitor, said, amid the hushed attention of the company—
“By the way, Tim, wasn’t that a queer account of the sea-serpent in the paper the other day?”
“Awfully queer,” replied the unsuspecting Tim; “I didn’t know you had seen it.”
“Fancy a beast a mile and a half long from head to tail!”