Читать книгу For Yardley - Ralph Henry Barbour - Страница 3

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“Wonder why it always rains on Saturdays?” muttered Alf Loring, laying his book face-down in his lap and staring discontentedly out of the window beside him.

It was a cheerless outlook. Through the blurred panes his gaze traversed the Yard, empty and bedraggled, to the back of Merle Hall and the gymnasium. Everywhere was rotting snow or pools of water, while from a low, leaden sky the rain fell straight and persistently. It had been raining just this way all day and half of last night, and to all appearances it intended to continue raining in the same manner for another twenty-four hours. Yesterday the Yard had been a foot deep in nice clean snow, the result of the blizzard that had swept over Wissining and New England in general two days before, and there had been more than one jolly battle royal out there. But now—Alf sighed; and, turning, looked aggrievedly at his roommate.

Tom Dyer was seated at the study table, face in hands, the droplight shedding its yellow glow on his tousled hair, paying little heed to aught but the lesson he was striving to master. Alf scowled.

“Who invented rain, anyhow?” he demanded. There was no reply.

“Tom!”

“Eh? What?” Tom looked up from his book, blinking.

“I asked who invented rain, you deaf old haddock.”

“Oh! I don’t know,” answered Tom, vaguely. His eyes went back to the book. Then he added, evidently as an afterthought and with a desire to escape responsibility, “I didn’t.”

“Well, I’d like to know what it’s good for,” grumbled Alf.

“Makes crops grow,” Tom murmured.

“There aren’t any crops the first of March, you idiot. For the love of Mike, Tom, shut that book up and talk to a fellow!”

“What do you want to talk about?” asked Tom, without, however, obeying his chum’s command.

“Anything. I’m sick of studying. I’m sick of everything. I’m sick of this rotten rain.”

“Pull the curtains and you won’t know it’s raining,” advised Tom.

“Of course I’ll know it,” replied the other, crossly. “I’ve seen it. This is a mean old time of year, anyhow. There’s nothing to do but study and read and loaf around; no hockey, no baseball, no golf——”

“There’s chess.”

“Chess!” exclaimed Alf, derisively. “That’s not a game, that’s—that’s hard labor!”

“Well, I guess it will stop raining to-night,” said Tom, comfortingly. “And in a day or two you’ll be playing baseball—or trying to!”

“A day or two!” Alf’s book slipped from his knees and fell to the floor with an insulted rustling of leaves. With some difficulty he dropped one foot from the window-seat and kicked it venomously. “A day or two! Gee, I’ll be a doddering idiot before that.”

“You are now. Shut up and let me study.”

“What’s the good of studying?” growled Alf.

“Well, I understand,” replied the other, calmly, “that before they allow you to graduate from Yardley Hall, Mr. Loring, they hold what is known as a final examination. And the examination is due to begin in just three months. Having survived the recent one by a hair’s breadth, I thought I’d like to make sure of getting through the next. I’m very fond of this place, Alf, but I’ll be switched if I want to stay here another year.”

“I think it would be rather good fun myself,” said Alf, with a faint show of animation. “Think of the sport you could have. You wouldn’t have to study much, you see, and life would be just one long loaf.”

“To hear you, any one would think you were the original lazy-bones. Dry up for another ten minutes and just let me get this silly stuff, will you?”

“All right.” Alf yawned and turned his attention again to the outer world. He was a good-looking youth of eighteen, with a jolly, care-free countenance, upon which his present expression of irritability looked much out of place. Even hunched as he was into a faint resemblance to a letter W, it was plain to be seen that he had all the height that his age warranted. He was well-built, slim, and powerful, with more muscle than flesh, and the Yardley Hall Football Team under his leadership had in November last completed a successful season by defeating Broadwood Academy, Yardley’s hated rival. Alf was the best quarter-back that the school had known for many years.

His roommate, Tom Dyer, was big, rangy, and sufficiently homely of face to be attractive. He was ordinarily rather sleepy looking, and was seldom given to chatter. He had very nice gray eyes, a pleasant, whole-hearted smile, and was one of the best-liked fellows in school. In age Tom was nineteen, having recently celebrated a birthday. He had been basket-ball captain, but his principal athletic honors had been won with shot and hammer in the dual meets with Broadwood. Both boys were members of the First Class, and were due to leave Yardley at the end of the next term.

The room in which they sat, Number 7 Dudley Hall, was shabbily cozy and comfortable, combining study and bedroom. It was on the first floor, with two windows looking on to the Yard, as the space loosely enclosed by the school buildings was known, and so possessed the merit of being doubly accessible; that is to say, one might enter by the door or, if faculty was not looking, by the window. The latter mode was a very popular one, inasmuch as it was strictly prohibited, and the windows of Number 7 were in full view of some four studies inhabited by instructors.

Alf looked at his watch, holding it close in the waning light. It was a quarter past five. He slipped it back into his pocket with a sigh. There was a good three-quarters of an hour to be lived through before supper-time. At that moment his glance, wandering to the Yard, descried a slim figure approaching along the path from Merle, slopping carelessly through puddles and paying no heed to the rain. Alf looked a moment and then smiled.

“Guess you’ll have to call it off now, Tom,” he announced. “Here comes Gerald, and it’s a safe bet he’s headed for our humble domicile.”

Tom groaned. “That kid will be the death of me if Maury doesn’t call the track candidates pretty soon. Gerald asks me every time I see him when we’re going to begin work, and whether I think he will make the squad.”

Alf chuckled. “I thought when he got his Y at hockey last month he wouldn’t be so keen about making the Track Team. He’s a funny kid.”

“He’s a rather nice one, though,” said Tom. “Here he comes. Bet you he will ask about track work before he’s been here two minutes.”

Footsteps sounded along the hall, and then there came a modest knock on the door.

“Come in, Gerald,” called Tom.

The boy who entered was not large for his fifteen years, and seemed at first glance a bit too slender and delicate to hope to distinguish himself on the cinders. But his slenderness held a litheness that spoke well for his muscles, and the apparent delicacy was largely a matter of coloring, for Gerald Pennimore had the fairest of pink and white skins, the bluest of blue eyes, and hair that only barely escaped being yellow. He was a nice-looking youngster, though, with an eager, expressive face, and an easy grace of carriage that was good to see. He greeted his hosts, closed the door behind him, and went over to the grate, where a little coal fire glowed ruddily.

“Yes,” said Alf, “I should think you’d want to dry your shoes, Gerald. You walked into every puddle in the Yard.”

“They’re not very wet,” responded Gerald, amiably.

“They’re soaking! It’s a mighty good thing for you that Dan isn’t here.”

“I’m not afraid of him,” laughed Gerald.

“You’d better be,” said Tom. “He will tan your hide for you, son, if he catches you doing stunts like that. Where is he to-day?”

“I don’t know. I expected to find him here.”

“I haven’t seen him since dinner,” said Alf.

“Pull a chair up there, Gerald, and get those shoes dry. Beastly weather, isn’t it?”

“Ye-es, but I’m rather glad to see the rain, aren’t you? It will take the snow off. I guess the track will be clean by to-morrow, won’t it, Tom?”

Tom shot an amused glance at Alf. “I guess so, but it will take some time to get it dried out and rolled down.”

“Will it? Do you know when Captain Maury is going to call the candidates, Tom?”

“Yes, I saw him this morning, and he told me he was going to get them together Monday,” answered Tom, patiently.

“Going to try the mile, Gerald?” inquired Alf, innocently.

“I want to. Do you think I’d stand any show of getting on the team, Alf?”

“I guess so. What’s your best time for the mile, Gerald?”

“I don’t quite know. Andy said he thought I did it once in about five minutes in the cross country, but that was on a dirt road, of course. I guess I could do a lot better than that on the cinders.”

“Rather! Besides, any chap can do better in warm weather. Even if you shouldn’t make the team this spring, Gerald, you’d get a lot of fun out of it, and it would do you good besides. It’s a bit unfortunate, though, that Maury runs the mile himself. It’s awfully hard to crowd the captain off the team.”

“Oh, I wasn’t expecting to do that,” Gerald replied, with amusing naïveté. “I just thought maybe I could get a place. Has Broadwood got good mile runners?”

“How about that, Tom?”

“Yes, I think so. Usually she’s better on the distances than anything else. But we beat her in the cross country, and maybe our men are as good as hers this year. I suppose Goodyear and Norcross will both enter for the mile.”

“Are you going to be on the team this year, Alf?” Gerald asked.

“No, I guess not; not unless I’m pretty badly needed. What’s the use? Both Rand and Bufford can beat me in the sprints.”

“You might crowd a Broadwood man out in the trials, though,” said Tom. “And you wouldn’t have to train much; your baseball work would keep you in trim.”

“Wouldn’t it be fine,” asked Gerald, enthusiastically, as he felt of his damp shoes, “if we won the baseball and the track meet, too, this year? That would be a clean sweep, wouldn’t it? Football, cross country, hockey——”

“We won’t,” said Alf. “We never have in the school’s history. We’re bound to drop either track or baseball. Personally, I hope it will be track. Even then, though, we’d be doing ourselves proud, what?”

“We’ll be lucky if Broadwood doesn’t get track and baseball,” said Tom, piling his books up.

“Why? I thought we were pretty certain of the Duals,” said Alf. Tom shrugged his shoulders.

“Don’t see why. Just because we ran away with Broadwood last spring doesn’t mean that we’ve got an easy thing this year. She will work a whole lot harder, I guess. And we haven’t the men we had then. We’ve lost Wass in the hurdles, Bird in the quarter, Johnson and Fyles in the high jump, and two or three second-string fellows who might have made good this year. I guess we’ve got the sprints cinched without a doubt, but I’m not very easy in my mind regarding the field events.”

“Well, we know who will get first in the hammer,” laughed Alf.

“Meaning me? Perhaps; but if Broadwood gets enough seconds and thirds she may fool us.”

Gerald turned, listened, and then retired hurriedly from the grate.

“There’s Dan,” he said. There was a knock and the door swung open, admitting a disreputable figure in a dripping raincoat and a felt hat, from the down-turned brim of which drops of water trickled.

“Hello, you chaps! Fine day, isn’t it?”

“Who’s your tramp friend, Tom?” asked Alf. “Isn’t he a sight? Where’s the dog? Why, if it isn’t our old friend, Mr. Vinton! Ouch!”

The final remark was emphatic and spontaneous, for Dan’s wet hat sailed across the room with beautiful precision, and landed fairly against Alf’s face with a damp and dismal splash.

The others grinned enjoyably as Alf wiped the rain from his eyes and looked about for a weapon. Finding nothing save the hat, and doubting his ability to use that effectually, he had recourse to verbal weapons.

“Canaille!” he hissed. “Dog of a Christian! Varlet!”

“Go it!” laughed Dan, shedding his raincoat. “It was a bully shot, though, wasn’t it? What have you fellows been doing?”

“Leading a quiet, studious, respectable existence until you broke in with your low, rough-house manners,” responded Alf, severely. “Dan, you’re a mucker.”

“Alf, you’re a gentleman.”

“That’s a lie,” answered Alf, with dignity, subsiding on the window-seat again and hugging his knees. “Where have you been, you old brute?”

“You’d never guess,” replied Dan, with a laugh, as he backed to the fireplace and held his hands to the warmth.

“Taking tea with Old Toby,” hazarded Alf. (Old Toby was school vernacular for Dr. Tobias Hewitt, Principal.)

“Not as bad as that, Alf. I’ve been sliding around the river in two inches of slush on what Roeder calls his ice yacht. Seen it? It looks like somebody’s front gate with a leg-of-mutton sail stuck up on it.”

“Must have been fun in this weather,” laughed Alf.

“It wasn’t so bad until we went into a hole up near Flat Island and had to work for half an hour pulling the silly thing out. I wanted to let it stay there; told him it would float down when the ice thawed; but he insisted on rescuing it.”

“You’re a crazy chump,” said Alf, viewing him, however, with evident affection. Dan Vinton was tall and lithe and long-limbed, with a wide-awake, alert appearance and an almost disconcerting ability to think quickly and act in the same way. In age he was just over sixteen, and he was a trifle large for his years. He had steady brown eyes, brown hair, a short, straight nose, and a pleasant, good-tempered mouth. Dan was a Second-Class fellow and had been chosen football captain in the fall.

“I’d give a dollar for a nice cup of hot chocolate,” he announced. “I’m hungry as a bear. Got anything to eat, you fellows?”

“Not a thing,” replied Alf. “I can’t keep grub here; Tom eats it all up. Anyhow, eating between meals,” he added, virtuously, “is very bad for the health.”

“It’s good for the tummy, though,” said Dan, crossing over and seating himself at the other end of the window-seat. “Well, what’s new?”

“New! Nothing’s new. Nothing has happened in this dead-and-alive hole since—since the hockey game. I detest this time of year, don’t you?”

“It is a bit dull, but I guess we’ll be outdoors in a few days. Gee, but I’ll be glad to feel a baseball again!”

“Me too. We’ve been discussing the Track Team’s chances. Now that Gerald has decided to come out for the mile it looks like a pretty sure thing for Yardley.”

“Oh, you can make all the fun you want,” said Gerald, cheerfully. “I’ll bet, though, that I’ll win just as many points as you will, Alf.”

“That’s a good safe wager,” observed Tom, lazily. “Of course, I’m not saying Alf might not win a third some time if he could keep his feet. But he always takes a header just before the tape, and tears up the track. Gets an idea, I suppose, that the quickest way to get there is to slide. Shows his baseball training.”

“Oh, run away! I never fell but once, you old chump!”

“That’s all Adam fell,” said Dan, “and see what happened to him! By the way, did I tell you what Tom calls his ice-boat? The Planked Steak.”

“Go ahead,” said Alf, “what’s the joke?”

“I asked him why he called it that and he said it was made of planks, and the mast was the stake. Not bad, what?”

Alf groaned. “It sounds like one of Tom’s jokes. His sense of humor is decidedly heavy.”

“My sense of hunger is decidedly strong,” said Tom. “And it’s five minutes of six. Let’s go over. Want to wash up here, you two?”

“Yes,” Dan answered, “though I feel as though I was pretty well washed already. I’ll bet there isn’t a really dry spot about me. Where’d you get this villainous soap, Tom?”

“Don’t ask me; that’s some of Alf’s. Doesn’t it smell fierce?”

“Awful! Where’d you find it, Alf?”

“That soap,” responded Alf, haughtily, “is the best made, and extremely expensive. The delicious perfume which you mention and can’t appreciate is lilac. That soap costs me two and a half cents a cake, at Wallace’s.”

“Well, then, Wallace has at last got even for the glasses you broke there once,” laughed Dan. “I’ve noticed an unpleasant atmosphere about you for some time. Now it’s explained. All ready? Come on, then; let’s eat!”