Chapter II. Captain Innes Receives - Page 2

made--"

"Well, you asked me, didn't you?" laughed Clint. "Besides, how can I help but like it when I am honoured by being roomed with you?"

"Sarcasm!" hissed Amy. "Time's up!" He slammed his book shut, tossed it on a pile at his elbow, yawned and jumped from his chair. "Let's go visiting. What do you say? Come along and I'll interdoodle you to some of our prominent criminals. Find your cap and follow me."

"I wish," said Amy, as they clattered down the stairs in the wake of several other boys who had lingered no longer than they after nine o'clock had struck, "I wish you had made the Fifth Form, Clint."

"So do I," was the reply. "I could have if they'd stretched a point."

"Um; yes," mused the other. "Stretched a point. Now that's something I never could make out, Clint."

"What!"

"Why, how you can stretch a point. The dictionary describes a point as 'that which has position but no magnitude.' Seems to me it must be very difficult to get hold of a thing with no magnitude, and, of course, you'd have to get hold of it to stretch it, wouldn't you? Now, if you said stretch a line or stretch a circle--"

"That's what you'll need if you don't shut up," laughed Clint.

"A circle?"

"No, a stretcher!"

"What a horrible pun," mourned Amy. "Say, suppose we drop in on Jack Innes?"

"Suppose we do," replied Clint cheerfully. "Who is he?"

"Football captain, you ignoramus. Maybe if you don't act fresh and he takes a liking to you he will resign and let you be captain."

"Won't it look--well, sort of funny?" asked Clint doubtfully as they passed along the Bow.

"What? You being captain?"

"No, our going--I mean my going to see him, Won't he think I'm trying to--to swipe?"

"Poppycock! Jack's a particular friend of mine. You don't have to tell him you want a place on the team, do you? Besides, there'll likely be half a dozen others there. Here we are; one flight."

They turned in the first entrance of Hensey and climbed the stairs. Innes's room, like Clint's, faced the stair-well, being also Number 14, and from behind the closed door came a babel of voices.

"Full house tonight," observed Amy, knocking thunderously. But the knocking wasn't heard inside and, after a moment, Amy turned the knob and walked in, followed by Clint. Nearly a dozen boys were crowded in the room and each of the two small beds sagged dangerously under the weight it held.

"We knocked," said Amy, "but you hoodlums are making so much noise that--"

"Hi, Amy! How's the boy?" called a youth whose