CHAPTER V
Curing the Joker
Hard work in school occupied the attention of the boys for the rest of the week, for examination time was near, and even Jerry Gilroy was obliged to dismiss baseball from his mind in a frantic attempt to catch up with his geometry and Latin, that somehow appeared to keep perpetually ahead of him. Frank and Joe sweated over the ablative absolute and grumbled over the heroic exploits that could be resurrected from the deathless lines of Cæsar and Virgil if one could but distinguish verbs from nouns, and wondered, as schoolboys have wondered from time immemorial, why they should be obliged to concern themselves with things that happened two thousand years ago and more when they might better be outside playing.
When Friday night came they emerged from the haze of declensions and vocabularies, axioms and theorems, equations and symbols in which they had been engulfed all week and decided that Saturday should see them as far away from school as possible.
"Let's get out of the city altogether," suggested Frank, as the Hardy boys left the classroom on Friday afternoon. "What say we all go for a hike out into the country?"
"Suits me," agreed Chet. "No motorcycles either. Let's walk."
"Good idea," Jerry Gilroy approved. "Unless," he said hopefully, "you fellows would rather come up to the campus and have baseball practice."
"Another smart remark like that out of you and I'll practise my famous left hook on your jaw," warned Biff Hooper, squaring off in a pugilistic attitude. "We don't want to see or hear of this school again until Monday morning, and that'll be too soon."
"All right, all right," said Jerry placatingly. "I just thought I'd mention it."
"And I just think you'll forget about it," said Chet. "You'll come along on this hike with us. Here, have an apple and keep quiet."
He dug into the inexhaustible recesses of his pockets and produced a slightly shopworn apple, which he thrust into Jerry's hands. "There, see if that'll keep you quiet for a while."
Jerry, who could never resist anything in the nature of food, accepted the donation eagerly.
"Where shall we go on this hike?" he asked, raising the fruit to his lips.
"I was thinking we could go up to Carl Stummer's farm," suggested Joe. "Mother was saying she wondered if Stummer would let her have any cherries to can this year. This would be a good time to ask him."
"Suits me," said Jerry, taking a prodigious bite of the apple.
Then an expression of pained surprise crossed his face to be replaced by a look of ghastly realization. Tears spurted to his eyes and his jaws worked convulsively. Then he emitted a gurgle of agony, spluttered, spat out the apple and began to dance around on the pavement, waving his arms in the air.
"Indian war dance!" commented Chet gravely, clapping his hands. "Fine work, Jerry. Do it again."
"Pepper!" spluttered Jerry. "I'm burning up! Water!"
"Call the fire brigade," advised Chet, bursting into a shriek of laughter.
The other lads gazed at their companion in amazement until his wild antics became too much for them and they all roared as Jerry continued his frantic splutterings. Wildly, the victim turned toward the school again. There was a water fountain near the front door and he headed toward it, but his eyes were so full of tears from the mouthful of red pepper that he had gulped when he bit into the hollow apple that he did not see a flower-bed in his path.
Jerry stumbled over the wire border and sprawled full length among the flowers.
The janitor, a cantankerous individual named MacBane, had been standing near by watching the performance with a broad grin on his usually dour features. But when he saw Jerry fall into his precious flower-bed he gave a roar of fury.
"Awa' wi' ye!" he bellowed. "Awa' frae ma flowers, ye young limb! I'll hae ye reported!"
MacBane always lapsed into broad Scotch when his temper was aroused. The rest of the boys scattered, fearing the wrath to come. Jerry managed to scramble out of the flower-bed just as the janitor reached him. He jumped out of reach of the outstretched hand, with the result that MacBane lost his balance and overstepped the border, treading on some choice blossoms and getting tangled up in the wire.
Jerry made for the fountain and was already taking deep gulps of the cool water when MacBane, now spluttering unintelligible phrases that could only have been understood in the remotest reaches of Caledonia, got out of the flower-bed and thundered toward him. With a longing glance at the spouting water, for his raging thirst was not yet appeased, and with a fearful glance at the approaching janitor, Jerry turned and fled.
He joined his laughing companions at the street corner, and with a shame-faced air admitted that the joke had been on him. MacBane gave up the chase, vowing threats of vengeance on the following Monday.
"He'll forget all about it by then," assured Phil.
"I won't forget about it," declared Jerry. "Next time anybody offers me an apple I'll ask for an orange instead. You can't very well fill that with pepper. I'll get even with you, Chet."
"You're welcome to try," replied the practical joker cheerfully. "But in the meantime let's plan this trip for to-morrow."
As a result of their arrangements, the Hardy boys and their chums met in the barn back of the Hardy home early the next morning, all outfitted for a hike into the country. Each lad carried a substantial lunch, their mothers realizing that the noonday meal by the roadside is one of the chief features of such an outing. Phil and Tony were late, and the other boys put in the time by exercising in the Hardy boys' well equipped gymnasium, to which purpose the barn had been converted. Biff Hooper practised left hooks and uppercuts with desperate intensity and battered the punching bag until it hummed; Chet almost broke his neck attempting some complicated maneuvers on the parallel bars that were meant as an imitation of a circus bareback rider; Jerry contemplated his lunch and wondered if it were too soon after breakfast for a piece of pie.
Phil Cohen and Tony Prito arrived together and the boys started off at last, trudging along the broad highway in the early morning sunlight, whistling away in the best of spirits. They were decorous enough while they were in the city limits, but once they struck the dusty country roads their natural activity asserted itself and they wrestled and tripped one another, ran impromptu races, picked berries by the roadside and laughed and shouted without a care in the world.
The road skirted the Willow River, which ran among the farms and hills back of Bayport, through a pleasant, pastoral country. Toward the middle of the morning the boys left the road and struck out beneath the trees toward a secluded spot on the river, where they enjoyed a swim. For over an hour they splashed about in the cool water. Chet was the first to come ashore, and the others would have remained much longer had it not been for the discovery that their thoughtful companion, after getting dressed, was busying himself in the time-honored pastime of tying their clothes into knots.
Whereupon they scrambled out of the water and chased the chubby one into the shelter of some bushes, whence they were unable to pursue him further because the thorns hurt their bare feet and they were forced to retreat, hopping, toward the river bank while Chet jeered at them from the covert.
"Chaw on the beef!" he cried, in the time-honored way.
"Just you wait!" spluttered Joe, chewing on a knot with all his might.
"Am waiting," was the cheerful retort of the joker.
"We'll skin you alive!" muttered Jerry.
"And salt you," added Frank.
But when they had untied the knots they gave chase and the plump jester was soon winded, although he had a good start. He puffed and panted as they chased him down the road in the dust. They caught up to him at the entrance to the lane leading into Carl Stummer's farm, forcibly divested him of his hiking-boots, socks and necktie and proceeded to wreak revenge.
"We'll cure you of practical jokes for a while," promised Frank, with a grin, as he cast one boot into a field wherein a bad-natured bull was grazing, and the other into a field at the other side of the lane, with a heavy growth of thistles around the fence.
"See if you're as good at untying knots as you are at tying them," added Jerry, as he twisted Chet's necktie into a veritable Chinese puzzle.
"And now see how it feels to walk around in your bare feet," suggested Phil, as he hung one of Chet's socks over the limb of a tree some distance down the road and placed the other in the middle of a clump of brambles.
Biff Hooper and Tony then released the protesting Chet. They had been sitting on him in the middle of the lane while the others were performing their kindly offices. "We'll see you down at the farm," said Biff airily, as the lads went chuckling down the lane in the direction of Stummer's place.
Spluttering and vowing threats, Chet was forced to retrieve his clothes. When he sought to regain his boot from the pasture the bull saw him and rushed toward him with a bellow. Chet, in bare feet, just reached the fence in time and tumbled over into the bushes with the rescued boot. Then he had to step gingerly through the thistle patch in the other field before he could get the other boot. After that he had to climb a tree before he could reach one sock, and go plunging through the brambles before he could regain the other. When the laughing boys last saw him he was sitting by the roadside picking thistles from his feet and gazing hopelessly at his necktie.
"He's cured for a while now," chuckled Joe, as the boys came up into the barnyard of Stummer's farm.
"Cure him? Never!" exclaimed Frank. "He'll be making us all step before the day is out."