Page:The Eight-Oared Victors.djvu/239

Rh opened, they being all alike, and many without numbers.

"I'll just stay here and wait," he decided. "He can't stay in there very long," and then Tom began to wish he had slipped on his bath robe, for he was getting more and more chilly each minute.

"Hang It all! Why doesn't he come out?" he asked himself half a dozen times. "I'm not going to stay here all night."

But even at that, while calling himself all sorts of a foolish person, Tom remained.

"It's too good a joke to pass up!" he decided. "I'll surprise Sid when he comes out. Poetry! Bah! We'll write a love verse for him!"

Several minutes passed. Tom moved about, and began to do some exercises with his arms, to bring up his circulation. He was striking out vigorously, feeling in quite a glow, when his elbow, as he drew back his arm, came in sharp contact with the door behind him. Unaware of it, he had been standing in front of some portal while he waited.

"Oh, for cats' sake!" thought Tom, in grim despair as the sound boomed out with startling distinctness in that dim and silent corridor. "Now I have gone and done it. I guess I'd better pass up Sid and his poem, and get back to my little bed. I wonder if I can make it before someone sticks out his noddle, and wants to know what I'm doing here?"