“And Ready?”
“He’s too flip. He’s got himself disliked by his freshness, and I fancy he’ll have a hard pull to make the nine.”
“Nor is he better than other men who are working for his place. I have been promised absolute authority this spring, and I shall have something to say about the make-up of the team I am to captain.”
By this time Bart had begun to cool down somewhat, and now, of a sudden, Merry reverted to the thing about which he had attempted to speak a while before.
“Hodge, you want to stop worrying about the thing that has troubled you so much lately. I am your truest friend, and you must let me speak out frankly. You’ll feel better when I have finished. I know whose picture you held in your hand when I entered—the picture you put in that drawer.”
Bart’s face was very pale now and he had begun to quiver again.
“We had a plain face-to-face talk about her on Cumberland Island not so very long ago, but the finish of that talk left us just where we began. Since then many things have happened, and, as far as I am concerned, that matter has been entirely settled.”
Bart felt a tightening about his heart. So it was true that Frank had remained away from college to see Elsie again and to win her back to him! Somehow, it did not seem just exactly like Merriwell, and yet how could Bart complain, for had not Frank held the prior claim to her?
“Elsie is a beautiful, noble-hearted girl, whom I cannot find words to properly extol,” Merriwell calmly continued, his coolness and confidence causing Bart’s heart to sink still more. “I do not wonder that I came to admire her very much. It would have been far more remarkable if I had not. But I have learned that I wholly misinterpreted my feelings and emotions toward her. Read others however well I may, I did not properly read and analyze myself in regard to her.”
What was Frank saying? Hodge felt a rush of blood to his heart, which began to thump violently in his breast.