He was just deciding that, perhaps, after all, according to the practise of the best aeroplane-builders, coat-tails, and not arms, are planes, when he heard a sound within the cabin. He was startled. There was a mumbling, kept up for some time, and accompanied by a low pounding on wood. Left Ear promptly became Sherlock Holmes. Dragging Dr. Watson along, he sneaked about to the back of the cabin and looked in through a little window. There stood Poodle Darby, by a wooden kitchen-table, reading aloud from a sheet of paper, and keeping time by tapping on the table! The room was bare, except for the table, a chair, and many papers. Left Ear gleefully chortled to himself. “So _here’s_ where you come when you want to write poetry for the school mag., is it, Mr. Poodle? You think you _will_ keep us away, do you? You think you will get in poetries on us, do you?” By this time he was running down the hill side, too busy even to be an aeroplane. He gathered the first four Sophomores whom he met in the Yard, explained to them in a gasping yelp the awful thing Poodle was doing, and the five started on the dogtrot for the shack on Bilbunet Hill. As they edged up to the window, Poodle was in the midst of reading the poem all over again, after having rewritten a couple of lines. He read it loudly and clearly. He must have liked it, for the joyous listeners outside heard him declare, “Say, that ain’t _half_ bad!” “Sure it ain’t!” shouted Left Ear, outside, and the five rushed for the open door on the other side of the shack. Poodle arose, in huge horror, and faced five large, happy grins. “We thought we’d call on you and read you some of our poetry,” said Left Ear. “It’s so nice (ain’t it? Yes, no? sure it is, little Poodle; now don’t you answer me back) to have a fellow-goat—excuse me, fellow-poet, I meant—sympathize with you, in this crool world. Say, will you fellows just sit on Poodle,” he suggested to the other four, “and I’ll read you some of the beau-ti-ful things he has on that mahogany kitchen-table there. Oh, Poodle, how _could_ you be so crool and keep them gems from us?” There is an unwritten law of Santa Benicia that when a man is about to be subjected to a “jolly,” he may, if he have reasonable excuse, state it, and not receive the “jolly,” yet not be regarded as “begging off.” However, if he attempt to do this very often, it will take an excuse that would shake the world to be accepted as good. Poodle had never tried to get out of being “jollied” before, but this time he pleaded. “Aw don’t Left Eared.... _Reason’ble ’Scuse!_ This stuff I’m writing is for the school paper—it’s verse, all righto, but you’ll spoil it for me if you read it.” “It don’t go—bum excuse,” growled Left Ear, furious at the prospect of losing this chance of being in the lime-light. “It _does_ go—first time I ever made Reason’ble ’Scuse; and it _is_ reasonable, and it’s going to go.”