CHAPTER XIX

THE BOXWOOD PICTURE

But there was no need to ask Jerry what had happened to the chemistry professor. Soon after the relieved youths poured out of the examination room they observed, coming along the street and stopping in front of the house of Professor Snodgrass, an automobile containing that little scientist, Professor Baldwin and Jerry himself.

“Dear me!” exclaimed Professor Snodgrass, looking at his watch, “we have been gone a long time. I had no idea it was so late, and I had some research work I wanted to do.”

Something seemed to strike Professor Baldwin suddenly.

“Late!” he exclaimed, also looking at his watch. “So it is late. I had--let me see--I had something special on for this afternoon. Where is my memorandum book?”

He consulted it, and a look of consternation came over his face.

“Well, well!” he cried. “I was to have conducted a chemistry examination this afternoon, but I forgot all about it. Pshaw! How forgetful I am becoming! It is too late, now, though,” he added with a sigh. “Too late!”

Jerry Hopkins smiled, and had it not been so near dusk Bart and some of the others would have seen him winking at them.

“How ever did you manage it?” asked Bart, becoming exceedingly friendly with Jerry all of a sudden. “Did you kidnap Baldy?”

“Well, you _might_ call it that,” admitted Jerry. “But he himself helped some. This is the way it was. I knew you had to play on the team, and you told me you would surely flunk in chemistry. So I argued that the only way to do was to have the exam postponed.

“Now, if there is one professor here that is as absent-minded and forgetful as Professor Snodgrass, it is the dean. And I happened to know something else about them. They hold radically different views on fossil shell formations. In fact, they come about as near to quarreling on that subject as two such delightful old gentlemen ever do come. So I knew if I could get them started on a discussion about fossils they might keep it up and the dean forget all about the passage of time. I also knew that I had to get the dean away from the college, or, even in the midst of a hot discussion, something might break in on it to remind him of the exam.

“Now I happened to know where there was a bed of fossils over near Fox Swamp. So I got a few specimens, and took them to Professor Snodgrass, pretending to be puzzled on a point concerning them. I mildly differed with him in some of his statements, and said that Professor Baldwin held different views, which, by the way, he did. He wouldn’t agree with Professor Snodgrass in a thousand years, so I knew I was safe.

“I pretended to be very much interested and puzzled, and I suggested that it would be a good thing if Professor Snodgrass and Professor Baldwin would accompany me to Fox Swamp, where we could go into the matter more thoroughly.”

Jerry paused to chuckle.

“Go on,” urged Bart. “What happened?”

“Well, they fell into the trap as easily as Chunky here can eat pie. I brought around the machine, got them in and off we went for the swamp. When I got them to the fossil bed, wild horses couldn’t have pulled them away, for I’d unearthed some new specimens. And then the fun began. The two professors went at each other with pet theories for weapons, and pointed out minute indications in geology that I had never dreamed of. I was completely out of it, so I wandered off in the woods and waited for them to finish.

“I guess they would have been at it yet, only they dug up a queer kind of rock that stumped them both to tell what it was, and they yelled for me to hurry with them back to the college so they could look it up in the dictionary--or whatever book they use for such things.

“And there you are, boys. We just got back, and it’s up to you chaps to provide some amusement for me in return for listening to a lot of dry rock-talk all afternoon, besides losing my fun.”

“Oh, we’ll take care of you all right!” laughed Bart. “That sure was one dandy little trick! It worked like a charm. Shake!”

Bart and Jerry clasped hands in a most friendly fashion, to the no small disgust of Frank.

“Great work, Jerry!”

“This will go down in college history!”

“The best ever!”

Thus Jerry’s chums congratulated him.

“Say, don’t let it get out--I mean my part in it!” begged Jerry. “I’d be jugged if it were known.”

“Oh, we’ll keep it dark,” promised Bart. “The faculty will never know.”

It is hard to say whether this state of affairs existed long, but one is inclined to think that some, at least the proctor, must have suspected. But he could do nothing, for Professor Baldwin had remained away of his own accord. And he was the dean.

“Say, why do you want to get so thick with that Jerry Hopkins?” asked Frank of Bart that evening.

“Because he did me a big favor. I’d never have been able to play in the game to-morrow if he hadn’t held that exam off the way he did.”

“Um,” was all Frank said.

That Thanksgiving Day game with Kenwell was a good one, though at first, when the military lads rolled up two touchdowns and a goal against Boxwood Hall, it looked black for the latter. And then Bart cut loose, and in each of the second, third and fourth quarters made a touchdown, while another was scored on a forward pass, and thus Boxwood Hall humbled her ancient enemy.

“That’s the way!”

“Whoop her up!”

“We’ve beat ’em, boys!”

“Three cheers for Bart Haley!”

They were given riotously.

“Three cheers for Jerry Hopkins!”

There was no apparent reason why they should be given, for Jerry was not on the team.

But they were given with resounding echoes, for the story of how Jerry had saved Bart to the team was all over the school by then. Only one lad refrained from joining in the cheers for Jerry, and he was Frank Watson.

“Oh, forget your grouch,” suggested Bill Hamilton. “Jerry and his chums aren’t such bad fellows, Frank.”

“I’ve got my own opinion,” was the answer of the headstrong lad.

There was a great celebration that night over the football victory, and if there were midnight lunches, Proctor Thornton did not surprise any of the feasters. Perhaps he purposely kept away.

Life went on at Boxwood Hall. It became too cold for motor boating, and the _Neboje_ was hauled out, for the lake would soon be frozen over. But the automobile was kept in use.

The Christmas holidays came, bringing a vacation which enabled the motor boys to go home, where they had glorious times.

It was a week after their return to Boxwood Hall, and the new year’s schedule of lessons was under way. President Cole, on the reassembling of the college classes, had made a plea for harder mental work, and most of the boys were buckling down to their lessons, at least for a time.

Bob, Ned and Jerry were sitting in their rooms, or rather, in Jerry’s room, one evening, studying. Finally Jerry flung his book away from him, upsetting a tumbler of water over Bob, who yelled out:

“What does that mean?”

“It means I’ve just thought of something,” said Jerry.

“Well, I wish you’d keep such thoughts to yourself,” grumbled the stout lad, as he sopped up the water.

“What’s the idea?” asked Ned.

“This,” replied Jerry. “Things have been too slow around here of late. Everything has a flat taste. We are getting into a rut. No one has brought a cow, or even a goat, into a class room.”

“I was a goat in French to-day,” declared Ned. “I couldn’t get a single verb right. But go on.”

“Merely this,” said Jerry. “Let’s do something.”

“What?” asked Bob.

“You know the Boxwood picture that hangs in chapel; don’t you?”

“That big oil portrait of Ebenezer Boxwood, founder of the college?” Ned inquired.

“Yes,” nodded Jerry. “That’s the sacred cow I refer to. Now what is the reason we can’t take that picture and hang it where all who wish may admire it? Say hoist it up on the flagpole, where it can be seen. It hangs in such a dark corner in chapel that the full beauties of it are not brought out. On the flagpole they could be seen.”

“You mean to hang the sacred Boxwood Hall picture on the pole?” asked Ned.

“I do,” said Jerry.

“Who’ll do it?” asked Bob.

“We will,” said Jerry, calmly.