Page:Stanwood Pier--The ancient grudge.djvu/35

24 Stewart gazed at them solemnly. Then he turned again to Floyd and confided in his ear, "They sing rotten. Cæsar's ghost! they're rotten!"

"Where did you get the punch?" asked Floyd, still bewildered.

"Jim Hobart had the fizz. But he rooms over a proctor, so we had to have it here—we had to have it here," Stewart repeated with sober emphasis. "And when we looked for you, you'd gone off no one knew where.—Oh, they're rotten!" He turned to the others. "'For he's a jolly good fellow!'"—and he sang, leading them extravagantly, solemnly, with the ladle.

While Floyd was looking on with a broadening smile, one of the guests detached himself from the group of singers and came up to him. He was a tall, narrow-faced boy, with black eyebrows that met thickly across his nose, sallow cheeks, and the concentrated, single-minded expression common to extremely narrow faces. "You're Floyd Halket," he said. "I'm Hobart—Jim Hobart." And promptly he grasped the lapels of Floyd's coat, and penning him into a corner, talked to him, with a mild, wavering gaze directed at the spot where his necktie should have been. Was it true that Stewart Lee had been under water half an hour? And dead when he came out? And how had Floyd saved him, anyway? "Don't mind their singing," Jim said imperiously, when Floyd tried to evade the close, redundant questioning. "You caught him under the arms? Go on, go on, go on, g'on, g'on, g'on, g'on—"

Floyd stemmed the torrent with a precipitant explanation; the others raised their glasses aloft, straining for a high note. "For he's a jolly good fel-lo-o-o-o-ow"—they came down panting—"which nobody can deny."

Stewart called for a repetition. "I did n't believe you were a real hero when Stewart Lee told us," said Jim Hobart, still browsing at Floyd's lapels. "You don't look it. Hero, hero, hero, hero—"