Tommy came through this explanation pretty well.  Uncle Dick’s understanding smile helped him a good bit.

“Quite so,” said Mr. Gordon, and looking at Major Pater again.  “Of course, I would never have known it was snowing if you had not undertaken to show me.  But you see, Major Pater, your foot was sticking out into the aisle.  I saw it.  You have the misfortune to——­”

“Artificial leg, sir,” growled Major Pater.

“Quite so.  Well, accidents will happen, you know.  There!  You are quite dry again.  I don’t think you will get much sleep here until the porter makes up the berths.  Suppose we go into the smoking compartment and soothe our minds, Major?”

“Ah—­Humph!  Thank you, Mr.—­er——?”

“Mr. Gordon,” explained Tommy Tucker still standing as though he had swallowed a very stiff poker indeed.

“Ah!  Glad to meet you, Mr. Gordon.”  They shook hands.  Then Major Pater shot another command at Tommy:  “H-r-r-rrp!” (or so it sounded) and the boy with vast relief dropped his stiff military pose.

The rest of the “live wire octette”—­even Timothy and Libbie—­were highly delighted by the outcome of Tommy’s joke.  For, if there is fun in such a practical joke as Tommy had tried to carry through, they thought there was double fun in seeing the biter bitten!

“Now will you be good?” crowed his brother, Ted.  “See what you get for being so fresh!  Tumbling over his game leg and pitching a wilted snowball at the Major’s head.  Aren’t you ashamed of yourself?”

“Oh, hush!” grumbled Tommy.  “You needn’t say anything.  He doesn’t know which of the Tucker twins it was crowned him with that snowball, and you are just as much in his bad books as I am.  Remember that.”

“Listen to him!” cried Ted, at once feeling abused.  “And Major Pater is near-sighted, too, although he scorns to wear glasses.  You’ve got me into a mess, too, Tommy Tucker.”

“There!  There!” said Betty Gordon, soothingly.  “Never mind.  Uncle Dick will smooth him down.  But I do think, boys, that you need not have got into trouble at all.”

“Huh! that’s our natural state,” observed Teddy.  “Boys out of trouble are like fish out of water.  So my dad says.  And he ought to know,” he grinned.  “He has twins.”

Tommy considered, however, that he had got out of a bad box pretty easily.

“Your Uncle Dick is fine, Betty,” he observed.  “Think of his getting on the blind side of Major Pater so easy.  But cracky! how that snow did squash all over him,” and he ended with a wicked giggle.

“One of your instructors, too!” exclaimed Louise.  “For shame!”

“My!” chuckled Bobby, “what we’d like to do to Miss Prettyman at Shadyside!”

“I am afraid Miss Prettyman is no more beloved than Major Pater is.”

“Never mind, you girls!” interrupted Tommy, with renewed interest in the storm and trying to peer through the window.  “It’s a regular blizzard.  When the porter opened the door of the vestibule for me to get that snow, I thought he wouldn’t get it shut again.”