Page:The purple pennant (IA purplepennant00barb).pdf/83

Rh "What's the matter with you?" asked Perry. "Can't I say that I like spring if I want to?"

"And what else were you going to say?" demanded Fudge sternly.

"That it makes you feel nice and lazy," replied the other in hurt tones.

"Oh! Nothing about—about the birds singing or the April breeze?"

Perry viewed his friend in genuine alarm. "Honest, Fudge, I don't know what you're talking about. Aren't you well?"

"Then you haven't heard it." Fudge sighed. "Sorry I bit your head off."

"Heard what?" asked Perry in pardonable curiosity.

Fudge hesitated and tried to retreat, but Perry insisted on being informed, and finally Fudge told about the "Ode to Spring" and the fun the fellows were having with him. "I get it on all sides," he said mournfully. "Tappen passed me a note in Latin class this morning; wanted to know what the other reasons were. Half the fellows in school are on to it and I don't hear anything else. I'm sick of it!"

Perry's eyes twinkled, but he expressed proper sympathy, and Fudge finally consented to forget his grievance and lend a critical eye to the doings