Wolcott sat all the way home in fierce and gloomy silence, broken only to answer some unavoidable question. Laughlin watched him for a long time without a word.
“How would you like to be on a defeated eleven?” he asked at last with a wise smile.
Wolcott answered and set his lips tight together. “All I ask is the chance to get at them.”
Whereat Laughlin laughed with pleasure, and said no more.
But time and new interests dull disappointment. The end of the school year arrived with its fêtes and ceremonies; the college examinations enforced their exacting demands. Then came a day when Laughlin and Lindsay stood together at the station and exchanged a fervent good-by and words of advice.
“Don’t spend all your time sailing and playing golf; rowing and swimming are what you need,” said Laughlin.
“And don’t wear yourself out at that hotel, throwing trunks,” cried Wolcott. “Light labor is what you need. If you get a chance, come over to the Harbor and see us.”
CHAPTER XVII
BACK AGAIN
All day long on the fourteenth of September the trains disgorged batches of young studiosi upon the platform of the Seaton station. The older boys, veterans of at least a year, hallooed jubilantly over the heads of the crowd to their returning friends, and in joyous groups which rapidly formed and dissolved, clinched grips and thrashed each other’s arms about in gestures quite contrary to the latest rules of etiquette. The newcomers, awed and diffident, threaded their way ungreeted through this waste of welcomes. Some came with mammas, who viewed the boisterous crowd with disapproval and skirted it in haste; some with papas, who looked and smiled and wished their own lads among the merrymakers; some with older brothers, who knew the station agents and the townspeople, but not the boys; and some like Dick Melvin of old and Laughlin of two years before, alone, unknown, with little money in the purse, but in their hearts a valiant purpose to accept the opportunity the school offered and climb the hard path others had climbed before them.
“Where’s Dave Laughlin?” was Wolcott’s first cry as he jumped from the car steps and was seized on one side by Durand and Ware, and on the other by the twins.