to the chum of chums!

"What the deuce got into me?" he thought gloomily. Until that moment the
sinister corruption of money had been foreign to his nature, but all at
once a change came to his outlook. "Gee, even a third would have been a
_whale_ of a sum!"

He rose and flunked horribly in an attempt to classify an ablative
absolute and answered "unprepared" when the Roman, maliciously pressing
his advantage, insisted on his translating. Then with sulky dignity he
strode to the blackboards with the B's and C's and the D's and flunked
once more on the conjugation of an irregular verb. What time was this
for trivial annoyances when his whole soul was rent with the thought of
the millions which he had squandered for a moment's sentimental impulse!
He was not ashamed of that impulse, no--but, all the same, Snorky, if he
had had finer feelings, would never have abused his generosity!

"What's the matter?" said the chum of chums, when, recitations over,
they had gained the secrecy of their bedroom. "You look positively
bilious."

"I didn't sleep much," said Skippy, eyeing him with intuitive disfavor.

"Well, for Heaven's sake brace up; you look as though you'd swallowed a
porcupine!"

"All very well for you to cheer up," Skippy thought to himself. It hurt,
there was no turning from it. It did hurt. What a blunder he had made!

"I could have hired him on a salary," he thought gloomily. But of course
now there could be no backing out.

"Well, now what have _you_ worked out?" said Snorky triumphantly.

"I? My mind has been concentrating on the business organization."

"Gaze on this!" Snorky proudly brought forth a diagram which to Skippy's
bewildered gaze looked like the cross section of a switch yard. "Do you
get it?"

"What's this?"

"That? Why that's the bathtub, you chump."

"It doesn't look like any bathtub."

"You're in it, looking down--see, this is the line of the water. Here's
the hot and cold--"

"But this and that--"

"That's your legs, of course. You're in the tub looking south. Your legs
stick out, don't they, and these are the foot regulators--"

"They look like feet."

"They are feet--that is, your feet stick in 'em."

"But how does it work?"

Snorky produced another scrawl.

"This is a cross section, you see. Works both ways. This you work with
your hands. Then you turn it on here with this catch, and your foot
regulators come into play--see?"

"It's awfully complicated."

"Ought t