"Bully for you, old man! You sure are a sport. Nothing like selling something that doesn't even exist! I see you years hence on Wall Street, peddling nebulous gold mines and watered stocks." "Oh, shut up, can't you!" laughed Paul good-naturedly. "Quit your joshing! I'm serious. You've got to help me, too. You must start in landing subscriptions to-morrow." "I! I go around rooting for your _March Hare_ when I know that not a line of it has seen printer's ink!" sniffed Melville. "Sure!" Melville grinned. "Well, you have a nerve!" he affirmed. "You're going to do it just the same, Cart." There was a compelling, magnetic quality in Paul Cameron which had won for him his leadership at school; it came to his aid in the present instance. Melville looked for a second into his chum's face and then smiled. "All right," he answered. "I'm with you, Kipper. We'll see what we can do toward fooling the public." "I don't mean to fool them," Paul retorted. "I'm in dead earnest. I mean to get out a good school paper that shall be worth the money people pay for it. There shall be no fake about it. To-morrow I shall call a class meeting and we'll elect an editorial staff--editor-in-chief, publicity committee, board of managers, and all the proper dignitaries. Then we'll get right down to work." Melville regarded his friend with undisguised admiration. "You'll make it a go, Kip!" he cried. "I feel it in my bones now. Hurrah for the _March Hare_! I can hear the shekels chinking into our pockets this minute. Put me down for the first subscription. I'll break the ginger-ale bottle over the treasury." "Shall it be a dollar, a dollar and a quarter, or an out and out one-fifty?" "Oh, put it at one-fifty. We're all millionaires and we may as well go in big while we're at it. What is one-fifty for such a ream of wisdom as we're going to get for our money?" Melville vaulted into his bicycle saddle. "Well, I'm off, Kipper," he called over his shoulder. "Got to do some errands for the Mater. So long!" "I can depend on you, Cart?" "Sure you can. I'll shout for your _March Hare_ with all my lungs. I'm quite keen about it already." Paul watched him speed through the gathering shadows and disappear round the turn in the road. Then, straightening his shoulders with resolution, he went into the house to seek his pillow and dream dreams of the _March Hare_. CHAPTER II THE CLASS MEETING AND WHAT FOLLOWED IT The following day at recess, after a noisy clamor of conversation and laughter, the class meeting came to order. "I have called you together to-day," began Paul Cameron from the platform, "to lay before 1920 a new undertaking. I am sure there is not one of you who does not want to make our class a unique and illustrious one. The Burmingham High School has never had a paper. 1920 has the great opportunity to give it one and to go down to history as its founder." He paused.