“What’s the time?” asked Curtis over the shoulders of the men who held the watches. “Beat it by two seconds? You don’t say so! and he pretended he couldn’t do anything on this track!”
Melvin helped the runner up the bank to the gymnasium, and bothered himself with neither the record nor the race. “How is the ankle?” was his first anxious question. “Did you feel it?”
“Not a bit!” stammered Dickinson, between gasps. “But the corners—are terrible. They stopped me—every time.”
The forty-five yard hurdles and the six hundred yard run came next. Todd won the hurdles from scratch: the six hundred went to Cary, a middler, who ran a steady race from a good start, Dickinson this time succumbing to the corners and the handicap, and finishing third.
The scene now changed to the gymnasium, where the last three events were to come off. “You fellows want to do something,” said Marks, coming over to the seat where Melvin, Varrell, and Curtis were sitting, ready for their events. “The middlers are beginning to crow already.”
“It doesn’t amount to anything,” answered Curtis, with a little sniff of contempt. “Anybody can beat a scratch man, if you give him enough handicap.”
“Of course,” rejoined Marks; “but they always were a fool class. Some of their men have done pretty well, too. It’s a bad thing for middlers to have a high opinion of themselves.”
“It didn’t hurt us last year,” said Melvin.
The pole vault was started, and Varrell nerved himself for his first public appearance. He looked at no one, for he could feel that curious questions were running among the spectators, and he feared to surprise discouraging comments on tell-tale lips. As he faced the bar in the familiar position, this fear vanished. He took his run, stuck his pole firmly into the soft plank, rose with a fine nervous spring, and swung himself lightly over. Even as he dropped, his courage came again. Conscious that his form was undeniably good, and aglow with the sense of reserve force, he now faced the on-lookers squarely, amused as he caught, on this lip and on that, comments not meant for his hearing:
“Not bad, after all.” “Pretty, wasn’t it?” “Corking good!” “Knows how, doesn’t he?” “Too slick to last.”