“Great Scott, Brad!” Rose exclaimed aghast. “You’re not going to leave the team!”
“Thunderation, no!” the Texan retorted. “I’ll hold down my job till the cows come home; but off the field I’m going to forget it and take a whack at the books I have hardly got a squint at since the term began. So, unless you gents want to start a row promiscuous like, kindly refrain from holding forth on the subject while I’m around.”
“Say, fellows, isn’t it pretty near time we organized a little fishing party up to the lake?” asked Fitzgerald.
Trout fishing was one of his pet hobbies.
“Any trout there?” inquired Fair quickly.
“Thousands of ’em,” returned Fitz.
“Will they bite easily?” asked Lance.
“Will they?” exclaimed the slim chap. “Well, I should say they would! Why, they’re absolutely vicious. A man has to hide behind a tree to bait his hook.”
“It wouldn’t be a bad idea,” Dick remarked. “We haven’t gone on a trip like that this fall. Say, Samp, why don’t you take a comfortable chair? You’ve been holding down that piano stool all evening, and you know you can’t play a note.”
The Hoosier winked significantly and cast a meaning glance at Fitzgerald, one of whose many accomplishments was the singing of popular ditties to improvised accompaniments consisting of a more or less skillful variation of two chords.