“You’ll have to meet them, Merry, just to take the wind out of these gas balloons!” he argued. “They say that you won’t accept the challenge, and that if you should you would insist on playing the match here. Those New London fellows demanded that we should go over there because they say they wouldn’t have a fair show in a New Haven rink.”
“I don’t know that I shall pay any attention to the challenge. Whoever heard of those fellows before, anyway?”
Dick Starbright talked the matter over with Bert Dashleigh that night in the seclusion of their room. Dashleigh sat in an easy chair, toying with his mandolin, which he now and then thumped when the conversation lagged. There was a rap on the door, and when it was opened Ready came in.
“Going into the thing?” he queried, squatting on the arm of a chair.
Dashleigh had risen, and now put down his mandolin. Though Ready had hazed and annoyed him in common with other freshmen, he had great respect for him.
“Camp down!” Ready requested, then repeated his question.
“Into what thing?” Dick asked, wondering if Ready was setting another sophomore trap for him and his friend.
“Oh! Then the news hasn’t floated hitherward? I’m to be congratulated. Thanks! I think I’ll shake hands with myself.”
Which he did, very solemnly.
“Chance for a fortune!” he said, winking owlishly. “Merriwell’s polo-team, of which you and I are the most important members”—bowing toward Starbright—“has been challenged by a little upstart-team from hinky-dinky New London. Now, I’d like to go to New London. Acquainted with a young lady over there, you know. I should like to wear my beautiful polo-suit and show her that I am a Pole. Merriwell won’t go. At least, he says he won’t. Now, we’re getting up a sort of combination jack-pot. Every Merriwell enemy is walking around the streets of this great and glorious city with his pockets turned inside out and his hands bulging with great rolls of green-backs, saying that Merriwell won’t go. So we’re collecting a fund for the needy, which is going to say that Merriwell will go, and that his team will knock the tar out of the boasters at New London. I was sure you’d want to get into the game; hence trotted my feet hitherward. Subscriptions to this fund unlimited; repayment guaranteed with one hundred per cent. interest immediately after the New London match.”