“You needn’t worry!” snapped Harry. “I wouldn’t keep after you at all. If I took the trouble to warn you once, I’d let you go after that.”
“Surely Frank Merriwell is as shrewd as I am.”
The afternoon exercises were over. On the campus were gathered knots of students, all of whom seemed to be eagerly discussing something of general importance.
“They know what is up,” said Harry. “They are talking baseball.”
He was right. Almost the sole topic of conversation on the Yale campus that afternoon was the baseball situation. The outlook for Yale was so dark that the most hopeful felt the shadow of gloom. Right on top of the loss of Capt. Hardy, Bink Stubbs had been conditioned, so that he must give up playing or take the chance of being dropped a class. The general feeling seemed to be that Yale’s nine was all to pieces.
The appearance of Merriwell in company with Phil Hardy caused a stir.
“There goes the lamb to the slaughter,” laughed Walter Gordan, who was in the midst of a little gathering of Merry’s old-time foes.
“Wouldn’t it be moah propah to say the cawfe?” drawled Willis Paulding, with a weak attempt at wit.
“Oh, he made himself a big gun by his work on the football team last fall,” said Pooler, with a grin of satisfaction; “but he’ll lose it all if he takes Hardy’s place on the nine.”
“He can’t get Hardy’s place,” said Walt Forrest.