Page:The fighting scrub, (IA fightingscrub00barb).pdf/52

 *teen if he's a day, and if he doesn't top six feet I'll eat my hat! Say, I wonder if we can't fix it to get together in dining hall. Suppose they'll let us? I'll find out to-morrow. There's a fruit store over there, and I think I smell peanuts!"

Going back, Kemble explained, while he cracked peanuts steadily, that he hadn't been able to do very well at supper. "Mental exhaustion, you know. I was all in when Wyatt let me go. I ought to hate that guy, but I don't seem to. He surely handed me some hot ones, but I guess I deserved them. What's the good of knowing so blamed much about the queers who wrote books a couple of hundred years ago? Heck, it's all I can do to half keep track of the guys who are doing it now! Wyatt asked me to tell him what I knew about Scott, and I said he was a mighty clever short-*stop, but I didn't know his batting average. But, gosh, he wasn't talking baseball, he was talking about the fellow who wrote 'Ivanhoe'!"

"I saw you from my window when you were making some of those brilliant sallies," laughed Clif, "and you certainly did look unhappy, Kemble!"

"I was! Say, drop the 'Kemble,' will you? I'm generally called Tom."

"I like Tom better. My names Clif, short for Clifton."

"I know. I heard your father call you that. That's a real classy name."

Clif reflected that he hadn't thought of his father for a long while, and felt sort of guilty.