It was composed of Frank Merriwell and a
number of his intimate friends; and wherever Frank and his friends were,
Dull Care usually hid his agued face and gave place to smiling Pleasure.
"That grumbling old boatman at the New Haven wharf was a liar!" groaned
Dismal Jones, as if it were a grief that he had not found the boatman's
unpleasant prognostications true.
"What did he say?" asked Danny Griswold, who had been prancing the deck
like a diminutive admiral, stopping now and blowing a cloud of cigarette
smoke from his nostrils.
"He said that a smoker of cigarettes is always a measly runt!" grunted
Bruce Browning, from the big chair in which he had ensconced himself
almost as soon as he came aboard, and which he had hardly left since.
"You're another!" said Danny. "He didn't say anything of the kind."
"He was a poet," said Dismal, "and he threw his comment into rime. I was
taken in by him, I suppose, because he seemed to be half-way quoting
Scripture:
"'The Pharisees were hypocrites,
And the _Merry Seas_ is a ship o' fits!'"
"A ship o' fits? Nothing eccentric about this steamer, so far as I can
see!"
"Except Danny Griswold!" exclaimed Bink Stubbs. "He is enough to give
anything fits."
"Something your tailor is never able to give you!" Danny retorted.
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