Page:Fairview Boys and their Rivals.djvu/17

Rh feet more, and it would have been all wrong. What was you trying to do with it, anyhow?"

"I thought I would turn it around. I only touched one little handle, and then the foot-plate, and the pesky auto wouldn't go straight at all. Yes, fellows," smiled the speaker at Frank and Sammy, "I'm like the bad penny, turned up again."

"I'm glad to see you in Fairview," said Frank. "How are you getting on at the academy?"

"Oh, I've quit there," said Tom Chubb, otherwise "the fat boy."

"How is that?"

"They said I wasn't far enough along to keep up with the class."

"I see."

"You know I don't know much," said the fat boy, frankly. "The fellows all made fun of me. Then they got mad. I couldn't hit back when they fought me, I was so fat. Well, all I could do was to get them in a corner and fall on them."

"Ha! ha!" laughed Sammy.

"That's pretty good," chuckled Bob.

"Father is thinking of coming to Fairview to live for the summer," went on the fat boy. "I think we'll take that vacant house Buxton was just looking at."

"Why, then, you may come to our school?" said Sammy.

"I reckon I will," replied the fat boy. "I hope so, for I like you fellows. Say," and he grinned from ear to ear, "remember how you met me in the mountains that night?"

"Of course we do," smiled Frank.

"How you told me how to get even with the students who hazed me? Well, I did it great and grand, and I'll never forget you for that."