“They can’t be a hundred per cent worse,” maintained Talbot. “That’s a logical impossibility. It would bring ’em below the zero point.”
And then, being boys, in spite of their advanced age and the seriousness of their interest and the fact that both, avowedly at least, were putting every available minute into their preparation for the next week’s battle with the Harvard preliminaries, they wrangled for a good quarter of an hour over the possibility—logical, actual, or theoretical—of things being a hundred per cent worse than they were without reaching the vanishing point. The reader will be spared this argument. If he is a boy, he can manufacture it for himself; if a grown-up, he has only to listen quietly to a knot of boys waiting in idleness for a bell to ring or a train to appear, and he will understand how it is done.
When the discussion had run its length, they recurred naturally to the first theme of conversation. It was Pete who reintroduced the topic of the new league.
“Whether Smith is straight or crooked,” he said, “he certainly expects his school to come out ahead. I’d give something to beat him at his little game.”
“Wouldn’t it be great!” Sumner’s exclamation was like an anticipatory smack of the lips; his eyes were fixed in a fervent but unseeing stare on the blank wall, his face beamed with delight at the mental foretaste of the joys of triumph. “We may do it, too!”
“And we may not!” answered Talbot, rising. “Let’s get after those French sentences.”
CHAPTER II
THE CUP
Whatever his faults, the president of the new league possessed unquestionably the virtue of activity. While the Westcott boys, scattered up and down the coast from Long Island Sound to Bar Harbor, were amusing themselves in their own idle but wholesome fashion,—camping, cruising, racing boats, playing tennis matches, and exchanging visits,—Mr. John Smith was devoting his surplus energy to the cause. One tangible result of his labors formed the basis of much curious questioning when Westcott’s gathered at the end of September for the year’s work. A prize was to be offered to stimulate interest in the contests of the league. Though many of the Westcott graduates had been laid under contribution and might be supposed to know definitely the purpose for which their money had been expended, it was soon discovered that no one possessed information extending beyond the statements in the newspapers. These began with encomiums on Mr. John Smith for his enthusiastic and efficient services and the success with which he had “rallied about him his hosts of friends”; they ended with congratulations to the new league on having a man of Mr. Smith’s caliber and influence at its head. In between was sandwiched the meagre news that a cup was to be competed for by the schools on terms to be announced later.
But Westcott’s had no notion of waiting until later. The boys stirred up the contributing graduates, and the graduates addressed to Mr. Smith certain pointed inquiries which suggested to the astute leader that it would be wise to announce the conditions immediately, even at the risk of losing some advantage for his own school. He appeared, therefore, at Westcott’s, one day during the second week of the term, bearing a big box of tinted cardboard, and made a speech to the assembled school in which he set forth the conditions of the gift and the high hopes of the givers. Then, with great impressiveness and in the midst of quivering expectancy, he removed the cover of the box, undid a bag of canton flannel and held forth the glittering thing to the general admiration.