“I see you can’t keep away,” he said, laughing. “It is a hard place to get away from. I’ve found that out a good many times before any of you ever came here to college at all.”
“I thought you were going up to Maine,” said Bill Brady. “That was what we heard after the boat race.”
“So I am,” said Dick. “But that’s later. There’s a whole lot to be done yet before I can get up there. Things that won’t keep. My business up in Maine will do very well when I get back from Stockholm.”
Jim Phillips sat up in sudden interest, and Bill Brady groaned comically.
“Were you serious in what you said at New London, Mr. Merriwell?” asked Jim. “Is there really a chance for some of us to get taken to Sweden on the Olympic team?”
“There’s a good deal more than a chance,” said Dick. “It’s rapidly becoming a matter of sheer patriotism for some of us to go. America has won every Olympic meet that has been held, you know, since the first revival of the old games at Athens in eighteen-ninety-six. That was the first time our athletes ever were taken seriously on the other side. They thought the little team we sent over for that meet was a joke. No one regarded us as serious competitors for the Englishmen. But we beat them there; we beat them in Athens again in nineteen-six, as we did in Paris in nineteen hundred, and you all know how our fellows cleaned up the meet in London in nineteen-eight.”
“Tempest, of course, we all expected to go,” said Harry Maxwell, who was strictly out of Olympic discussions. He was a good baseball player, but not in line for any track or field events.
“I know Tempest is the best sprinter in America,” said Dick, “and I’m inclined to think that he’s the best short-distance runner, up to the quarter mile, in the world. But there are several men here who can do good work. You, Brady, ought to shine in the hammer-throwing event. Jim, I expect you to try for the broad jump, certainly, and perhaps for some other events. And I think I’ll go into training myself.”
Dick Merriwell was no longer eligible to compete for Yale, but that he was out of college did not at all bar him from the Olympic games. Jim and some of the others had forgotten that fact. They were so used to regarding Dick as the master coach that they were likely to forget that this knowledge of all sorts of sports had been gained by active practice of them. He was a practical expert, as well as a master of theory.
“I say,” said Brady, sitting up, “I guess those Swedes are going to learn a few things about American athletics, even this year. What?”