“Don’t you try to start anything, Sam, till we’ve ’tended to business. Look here!” He pulled out his watch. “Seven-twenty-eight—and the time set’s seven-thirty.”
“Bother your watch, Shark!” cried Step. “Likely’s not it’s ’way off.”
The Shark frowned upon the doubter. “This watch,” he said severely, “has an average gain of twenty-two seconds, plus, a month. It was set by a jeweler’s chronometer four days ago. If you will take the trouble to compute the error which has arisen since then, and subtract——”
“Hold on! No rough work like that goes!” jeered Poke. “Twenty-two plus nothing! What’s the fraction? If we’re going to be accurate, let’s be accurate!”
For an instant the Shark stared at Poke.
“You—you talking of accuracy! Holy smoke!” he growled in disgust. “You couldn’t tell a vernier from a vulgar fraction!”
Sam thought he saw a chance to break in.
“Listen, you fellows——” he began; but this time the Trojan stopped him.
“Put it off till the show’s over, Sam. We want this thing done right, you know.”
“Sure! And you’ve got to make the speech, Sam!” chimed in Herman Boyd.