One of the sixth-formers, Fred Bartlett, who had played end on the school football team the preceding year, stepped forward.
“I’ve been asked to referee this scrap,” he said. “Any objection, Ives?”
David shook his head.
“Two-minute rounds. Get ready now, both of you; strip.”
Ruth had stood with a puzzled look in her eyes gazing after David and Wallace and Monroe as they entered the path into the woods. A few minutes before, a group of her sixth-form friends had passed that way and to her friendly inquiry whither they were bound had, like Wallace and Monroe, returned vague, evasive answers. On an afternoon ideal for games it seemed to Ruth incomprehensible that so many fellows should be going for a walk. She had not been brought up in a boarding-school without acquiring wisdom in the ways of boys, and when another group of fifth-formers slipped by and entered the path into the woods her suspicions were aroused.
Harry Carson, captain of the school eleven and the most influential and popular fellow in St. Timothy’s, came sauntering down from the upper school with his roommate, John Porter. They took off their caps as they passed Ruth and then turned into the path that all the others had followed.
Ruth formed a sudden, courageous resolve.
“O Harry!” she called. “Won’t you wait a moment, please?”