as he swung it:

"Stand back, Pinkey!--I'm comin'!"

The door crashed and splintered, and when it opened, Mr. Hicks fell in
with it.

He fell out again almost as quickly, for there was Pinkey with the
glaring eyes of a wild man, his jaws open, and from his mouth there
issued a strange white substance.

"He's frothin'!" Mr. Hicks yelled shrilly. "He's got hydrophoby! Look
out for him everybody!"

"G-gg-ggg-ough!" gurgled Pinkey.

"Who bit you, feller?" the cook asked, soothingly.

"G-ggg-gg-ough!" was the agonized answer.

"We'll have to throw and hog-tie him." Mr. Hicks looked around to see if
there was a rope handy.

"Don't let him snap at you," called Mr. Stott from a safe distance. "If
it gets in your blood, you're goners."

The cook who, as Pinkey advanced shaking his head and making vehement
gestures, had retreated, was suddenly enlightened:

"That ain't froth--it's plaster o' Paris--I bet you! Wait till I get a
stick and poke it!"

Pinkey nodded.

"That's it!" Mr. Hicks cried, delightedly: "He's takin' a cast of his
gooms--I told him about it."

The look he received from Pinkey was murderous.

"How are we going to get it out?" Wallie asked in perplexity.

"It's way bigger than his mouth," said Mr. Appel, and old Mr. Penrose
suggested humorously: "You might push it down and make him swallow it."

"Maybe you could knock a little off at a time or chisel it," ventured
Mr. Budlong. "It's hard as a rock," feeling of it. "You'll have to crack
it."

"It's like taking a hook out of a cat-fish," said the cook, facetiously.
"Say, can you open your mouth any wider?"

Pinkey made vehement signs that his mouth was stretched to the limit.

"It's from ear to ear now, you might say," observed Mr. Budlong. "If you
go to monkeying you'll have the top of his head off."

"If I could just get my fist up in the roof somehow and then pry down on
it." The size of Mr. Hicks' fist, however, made the suggestion
impractical.

"I believe I can pick it off little by little with a hairpin or a pair
of scissors or something." Miss Eyester spoke both confidently and
sympathetically.

Pinkey nodded, his eyes full of gratitude and suffering.

"Don't laugh at him," she pleaded, as they now were howling
uproariously. "Just leave us alone and I'll manage it somehow."

It proved that Miss Eyester was not over-sanguine for, finally, with the
aid of divers tools and implements, Pinkey was able to spit out the last
particl