iates.

"All right, Tubby; if it isn't so wonderful, just you jump up and do
it," returned Sam coldly.

"Look here, how many times have I told you not to call me Tubby!" burst
out the rich youth. "I don't like it at all."

"Then what shall we call you?" asked Sam innocently. "Tubblets?"

"No, I don't want you to call me Tubblets either. My name is
Tubbs--William Philander Tubbs."

"Gosh! Am I to say all that whenever I want to address you?" demanded
Sam, with a pretended gasp for breath.

"I don't see why you shouldn't. It's my name."

"But Tubby--I mean Tubblets--no, Willander Philliam Tubbs--the name is
altogether too long. Why, supposin' you were standing on a railroad
track looking east, and an express train was coming from the west at the
rate of seventy-five miles an hour, and it got to within a hundred yards
of you when I discovered your truly horrible peril, and I should start
to warn you of the aforesaid truly horrible peril, take my word for it,
before I could utter such an elongated personal handle as that, you'd be
struck and distributed along that track for a distance of a mile and a
quarter. No, Tubby, my conscience wouldn't allow it--really it
wouldn't." And Sam shook his head seriously.

"See here, what are you giving me?" roared Tubbs wrathfully. "Don't you
worry about my standing on a railroad track and asking you to call me
off." And then he added, with a red face, as a laugh went up from half a
dozen students standing near: "William Philander Tubbs is my name, and I
shan't answer to any other after this."

"Good for you Washtubs!" came from a boy in the rear of the crowd.

"I'd stick to that resolution, by all means, Buttertubs," came from the
opposite side of the crowd.

And then one older youth, who was given to writing songs, began to sing
softly:

"Rub-a-dub-dub!
One man in a tub,
And who do you think it is,
It's William Philander,
Who's got up his dander,
And isn't he mad! Gee whizz!"

The doggerel, gotten up on the spur of the moment, struck the fancy of
fully a score of boys, big and little, and in an instant all were
singing it over and over again, at the top of their lungs, and at this
those who did not sing began to laugh uproariously.

"I say, what's it all about?" demanded Tom, as he slid from the
turning-bar.

"Songbird Powell has composed a comic opera in Tubby's honor," answered
Larry Colby, one of the Rover boys' chums. "I guess he