“Nope. I meant no letters for you.”
Weir looked blank, then stunned, then crestfallen. Duncan handed out the pink envelope. The boys roared, and Weir strode off in high dudgeon.
That day Duncan purchased a box of pink envelopes, and being expert with a pen, he imitated the neat handwriting and addressed pink envelopes to every boy in the training-house. Next morning no one except Weir seemed in a hurry to answer the postman's ring. He came in with the letters and his jaw dropping. It so happened that his letter was the very last one, and when he got to it the truth flashed over him. Then the peculiar appropriateness of the nickname Puff was plainly manifest. One by one the boys slid off their chairs to the floor, and at last Weir had to join in the laugh on him.
Each of the boys in turn became the victim of some prank. Raymond betrayed Ken's abhorrence of any kind of perfume, and straightway there was a stealthy colloquy. Cheap perfume of a most penetrating and paralyzing odor was liberally purchased. In Ken's absence from his room all the clothing that he did not have on his back was saturated. Then the conspirators waited for him to come up the stoop, and from their hiding-place in a window of the second floor they dropped an extra quart upon him.
Ken vowed vengeance that would satisfy him thrice over, and he bided his time until he learned who had perpetrated the outrage.
One day after practice his opportunity came. Raymond, Weir, and Trace, the guilty ones, went with Ken to the training quarters to take the steam bath that Murray insisted upon at least once every week. It so turned out that the four were the only players there that afternoon. While the others were undressing, Ken bribed Scotty to go out on an errand, and he let Murray into his scheme. Now, Murray not only had acquired a strong liking for Ken, but he was exceedingly fond of a joke.
“All I want to know,” whispered Ken, “is if I might stew them too much—really scald them, you know?”
“No danger,” whispered Murray. “That'll be the fun of it. You can't hurt them. But they'll think they're dying.”
He hustled Raymond, Weir, and Trace into the tanks and fastened the lids, and carefully tucked towels round their necks to keep in the steam.
“Lots of stew to-day,” he said, turning the handles. “Hello! Where's Scotty?... Peg, will you watch these boys a minute while I step out?”