Page:The purple pennant (IA purplepennant00barb).pdf/180

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
THE PURPLE PENNANT

And Perry, being a good chum, assented.

The next day it rained. Not enough, as Fudge bitterly reflected, to keep a fellow from going to church, but sufficiently to make sojourning out of doors in the afternoon a very wet and unpleasant business. It drizzled, but the drizzle was much more of a rain than a mist, and when, about three o'clock, Fudge went across town to Perry's house he arrived in a fairly damp condition. Being damp affected Fudge's naturally sunny disposition. It didn't make him cross, but it gave him an injured and slightly pathetic expression and tinged his utterances with gloom and pessimism. He wasn't a very cheerful companion to-day, and Perry, who had been having a rather comfortable and cozy time curled up on the black horse-hair lounge in the Doctor's reception-room—also used as a parlor on extraordinary occasions—with a volume of Du Chaillu's travels which he had happened on in the book-case, almost wished that his friend had stayed at home. They went up to Perry's room and sat by the open window and watched the drizzle and talked desultorily of track and field work and yesterday's game and of many other things. The affair of the "train-robber" was, it seemed by mutual agreement, avoided; it was not a day to inspire one

to detecting. The "train-robber's" window was

162