CHAPTER VIII

PETE’S CLUB TABLE

On the Monday night succeeding the Robinson game the quartet was assembled in Pete’s study. Allan had the easy chair, Hal and Tommy shared the big table, and Pete sat on the trunk. The windows were closed, for the night was cold, and the big hanging lamp diffused light, warmth, and a strong odor of kerosene through the apartment. This odor Pete was heroically striving to mitigate with the fumes of a cob pipe. Hal had tried the other pipe, but had soon given it up, avowing discontentedly that Pete ought to keep some real tobacco on hand for guests who weren’t used to chopped hay. The bell in College Hall had just struck nine, and Tommy, for the fourth time, had slid from the table, pleading press of business, and had been pulled back by Hal.

“Forget your old business, Tommy,” said Hal.

“Don’t let him sneak,” said Pete. “We’re going to open a can of corn in a minute.”

“That’s all very well,” Tommy protested, “but I’ve got things to do. You lazy chaps, who never study----”

Dismal groans from the opposition.

“Can afford to loaf; but I want to tell you----”

“Of course you do, Tommy,” Allan interrupted, soothingly, “but we don’t want you to. Be calm, precious youth; the Purp” (college slang for the Purple) “will come out just the same, whether you continue to adorn that desk for another ten minutes or not.”

“Why don’t you fellows let a couple of weeks go by without putting out a paper?” asked Pete. “No one would notice it, and think what a high old time you could all have being useful for once.”

“Wish we could,” sighed Tommy.

“Tommy, you’re a wicked liar!” said Hal. “You don’t wish anything of the sort. If you missed an issue of that old sheet, you’d commit suicide in some awful manner; maybe you’d come down here and die of smells.”

“If you’d only put something in it,” said Pete, “something a fellow could read and enjoy--a murder now and then, or a lynching. Couldn’t you run a story with lots of blood? It’s such a dismal paper, Tommy.”

“You fellows might jump into the river,” suggested Tommy, scathingly. “We’d print your obits.”

“Our which?” Hal asked.

“Obits--obituaries,” he explained in a superior manner.

“Would you put ’em on the fir?” asked Peter.

“On the fir? What’s the fir?”

“Fir--first page.” Pete mimicked Tommy’s tone.

“No,” said Tommy, when the laughter had stopped, “not important enough.”

“Crushed and lifeless!” murmured Allan.

“Tommy,” asked Pete, severely, “do you mean that I’m not enough of a heavy-weight to be dishonored by having my name on the front page of that old up-country weekly of yours?”

“The front page is for important news,” said Tommy, with a wicked smile.

“Such as measles in the grammar school and the election of Greaves as president of the Chess Club,” explained Hal.

“Now, I’ll tell you what I’ll do with you, Thomas,” said Pete. “I’ll bet you anything from an old hat to a quarter section of land that I can get my name and a half a column of talkee-talkee on the first page of the Erskine Purple any time I want to. Now, what say, Thomas?”

“I’ll bet you can’t,” laughed the other.

“What’ll you bet? Money talks, my son.”

“Oh, most anything. If you want your name on the front page of the Purple, you’ll have to do some tall stunts.”

“Of course, that’s what I mean: kill the Dean, or blow up College Hall, or have a fit in chapel.”

“Or subscribe for the paper,” added Allan.

“Come, Tommy, speak up. What will you bet?”

“Oh, get out, you wild Indian! I’m going home.”

He made another effort to tear himself away.

“Tommy, you’re a coyote: you’re skeered an’ afeared. You know I’d win.”

“Oh, no, I’m not,” said Tommy. “I’ll bet a dinner for the four of us at the Elm Tree that you can’t get your name on the front page while I’m on the paper-- Hold on, though; I won’t bet that. I’ll bet you won’t get it there this year unless it’s merely the name, as a member of a society, or as having attended a meeting, or something like that, you know.”

“Thomas, you’re hedging,” said Pete, “but I’ll take your bet. And just my name isn’t to count; nothing less than a full paragraph to myself goes. You fellows are witnesses.”

“We are,” said Allan. “I smell that dinner already.”

“And you see Pete paying the bill,” said Tommy.

“I don’t know who pays, and I don’t care.”

“He cares not who pays for his dinner, so long as he may eat it,” said Hal. “Wise child, Allan. And, by the way, talking of eating reminds me. You know Billy Greb, Allan?”

“I’m going home,” said Tommy.

“(Shut up and sit down, Tommy!) Billy’s getting up a freshman club table and wants you and me to join. What do you say?”

“Where’s it going to be?”

“Pearson’s.”

“How much?”

“Six a week.”

“That’s pretty steep, Hal. Besides, I may go to the track-team table in the spring.”

“I’m going home, you fellows,” announced Tommy again.

“Will you please shut up?” asked Hal. “Well, you’d better join until then, Allan; sufficient to the spring is the evil thereof.”

“Well, I’ll think it over and let you know in a day or two. When does Greb want to start it?”

“First of the month. If you weren’t a foolish little sophomore, Tommy, you could come in too.”

“Huh!” answered Tommy, scathingly. “I’ve seen all I want of freshman club tables. I’m going----”

“How about me, Hal?” asked Pete. “I’d like to join, if your friend will have me.”

Hal hesitated for an instant.

“Why--er--I’ll speak to him about it. But I think he’s got his number made up.”

“That’s all right,” answered Pete, quietly.

“But I’ll do my best,” said Hal, hurriedly and awkwardly. “Maybe----”

“Call it off!” said Pete, with a cavernous yawn.

“If it was my table--” continued Hal, anxious not to hurt the other’s feelings.

“I know. _That’s_ all right. I can stand it.”

There was the sound of a gently closing door.

“Hello!” Pete exclaimed. “Where’s Tommy?”

The three glanced in surprise around the room. Then--

“I think,” said Allan, dryly, “I _think_ I heard him say something about going home.”

The next afternoon Pete found Allan at the gymnasium, and walked back to Mrs. Purdy’s with him. He was so quiet that Allan was certain he had something on his mind. What that something was transpired when they had reached Allan’s room.

“What sort of a cayuse--meaning gentleman--is this fellow Greb?” asked Pete.

“I don’t know him very well,” Allan replied, “but I fancy he thinks himself a bit of a swell. He’s a Dunlap Hall fellow, and of course you know what that means.”

“Never heard tell of it,” said Pete. “What is it--a preparatory school?”

“Yes, it’s-- Oh, it’s all right, of course, only we used to make a good deal of fun of it at Hillton. You go there when you’re nine or ten, and they give you a sort of a governess to look after you until you get old enough to make her life a burden; then they put you in another house. They’re terribly English, you know; have forms and fagging; and when you want a row with a chap, you have to notify the captain of your form, and it’s all arranged for you like a regular duel, and you go out back of one of the buildings, and somebody holds your coat for you and somebody else mops your face with a sponge, and you try and hit the other fellow in the eye. It’s like a second edition of Tom Brown. Think of getting mad with a chap in the morning and having to wait until afternoon to whack him! There’s no fun in that. You’d like as not want to beg his pardon and buy him a ‘Sunday’! But they think they’re a pretty elegant lot, just the same.”

“Think of that!” sighed Pete. “And I might have gone there, if I’d known, and had a nurse and all the scrapping I wanted. So this fellow Greb thinks he’s the whole thing, does he? Guess that’s the reason Hal was hunting a hole when I asked myself to join. I didn’t know you were so mighty choice about who you ate with. Out there we ask whoever comes along. I guess you fellows thought I was loco, didn’t you?”

“Thought you were what?”

“Why, crazy, inviting myself like that.”

“Nonsense, Pete; we all understood. There was no harm done. It’s just that Greb wants to get up a table of fellows he knows.”

“Does he know you?”

“Why--er--I’ve met him, of course.”

“And he could have met me if he’d wanted to, couldn’t he?”

“I suppose he could, but he doesn’t know about you.”

“Wouldn’t care to, I guess.”

“Oh, nonsense, Pete; you’re making a lot out of nothing.”

“Dare say he thinks I eat in my shirt-sleeves and swallow my knife,” continued Pete, gloomily. “Maybe he thinks I live on horned toads and grasshoppers.”

“But, I tell you, he doesn’t know you.”

“I guess he’s heard of me,” answered Pete. “Guess he knew you and Hal and I were traveling together.”

“Look here, Pete; if you want to join a club table----”

“Oh, _that’s_ all right. Moocha wano club table.”

“Oh, all right,” answered Allan, a bit puzzled.

“I’m going to join a club table on the 1st,” said Pete.

“Oh!” said Allan, again. “What--that is, whose is it?”

“Pete Burley’s.”

“What! How--how do you mean?”

“Mean I’m going to run my own grub-wagon. And I want you to join.”

“But-- Look here, Pete, I don’t believe you can find a decent place to take you. Everything’s full up already.”

“Where is there a decent place?” asked Pete, calmly.

“Well, there’s Pearson’s, of course, but you couldn’t get in there. And----”

“Why couldn’t I?”

“Because she takes training tables chiefly, and is pretty particular, anyhow.”

“Yes, that’s what she told me,” said Pete.

“Then you went there?”

Pete nodded.

“I could have told you you wouldn’t get in there. There’s a pretty good place further along----”

“Oh, _that’s_ all right. We start on the 1st.”

“Start where?”

“Mrs. Pearson’s.”

“Pete, you’re lying!” gasped Allan.

“No, straight talk. I engaged the front corner room on the second floor. It’s a right nice-looking place: paper on the walls, fireplace, lounge, window-seat----”

“But--but how’d you do it?”

“Oh, _that’s_ all right. We had a little pow-wow. It’s going to be six a week and no extras.”

“You crazy Westerner!” said Allan, in bewildered admiration. Then, “But you haven’t got any one to join, have you?”

“Not yet; but _that’ll_ be all right. It’s going to be select, you know; eight in all. There’ll be you and me, that’s two; and Hal----”

“I don’t believe he’ll come,” said Allan, doubtfully. “You see, Pete, he’s promised Greb.”

“I don’t guess Greb will have a table,” said Pete.

“Why not?”

“Well, where’s he going to put it?”

Allan stared. Then----

“Do you mean that you’ve got Greb’s room?” he exclaimed.

“’Twa’n’t his,” answered Pete, coolly. “He hadn’t settled the matter, and so I said I’d take it and put down a forfeit. And there isn’t another decent place for a high-toned, pedigreed chap like him to go to.”

“Pete Burley, you’re a wonder!” breathed Allan.

“Think Hal will join?” asked Pete, unmoved by the tribute. Allan nodded silently.

“That’ll make three, then. Now, of course, I know lots of fellows who would come in if I asked ’em, but, as I just said, this thing is going to be select; it’s going to be the selectest table in town. So you tell me who are the top of the bunch in our class, and I’ll go and fetch ’em in if I have to rope ’em and hog-tie ’em.” Pete took out a pencil and began to write on the back of an envelope.

“Of course, it’s all poppycock,” said Allan, “but--well, there’s What’s-his-name, the class president, and Maitland, and Poor----”

“Whoo-ee! I’m glad you thought of Poor.”

“And Armstrong--only he lives at home, I think--and Mays, and Wolcott, and--and Cooper--Cooper of St. Eustace, I mean; the other chap’s an awful duffer--and Van Sciver----”

“Whoa, Bill! That’s eight--eleven, counting us three; guess I can get enough out of the list. Besides, I must ask Greb; mustn’t slight Greb.”

“You’re not going to ask him?”

“Ain’t I? Just you keep your eyes peeled and you’ll see.” He got up and carefully put the list in the big yellow leather wallet he carried. “Guess I’ll see a few of ’em this afternoon. Want to come along?”

Allan shook his head vigorously.

“Not me, Pete. I don’t want to have to testify against you before the faculty. How do I know what you’ll do to those chaps to make them join?”

“Oh, say, Allan!” Pete turned at the gate. “Remember those ducks we saw on the river last week? Well, let’s go after ’em Thursday morning, will you?”

“Shooting, you mean? I haven’t a gun.”

“You take my shot-gun and I’ll use the rifle. I’ve shot ducks with a rifle before this.”

“All right, Pete, but like as not the silly ducks won’t be there Thursday.”

“Well, we’ll find something to shoot, all right, if it’s just squirrels. We’ll have nothing to do Thursday, and can stay as long as we like; make a day of it. Maybe we can find some place to have dinner and won’t have to come back here. I’m getting mighty tired of commons, Allan. Well, it’ll be considerable different when we get the table started, won’t it?”

“I suppose so,” answered Allan.

“Say, do you think Hal or Tommy would go along?”

“Ducking? Tommy might, but Hal’s going to sign off and go home over Saturday.”

“Lucky chap!” sighed Pete. “Wish I was.” He looked thoughtfully across the leaf-strewn college yard. “Suppose I could, but--guess the old man would raise Cain. Allan!”

“Yep?”

“I’d give a hundred dollars for sight of a mountain. Well, I must jog along.”