“Oh, yes, it can be did!” laughed Chet. “But Proc Thornton sure is strict, and he turns up when least expected. But I’ll have to decline. I’m on training table you know.”
“That’s so,” admitted Jerry. “I’d forgotten about that.”
“Come around to the gym to-night,” suggested the football player. “We’re going to have a little practice at the dummy. You fellows look as though you liked athletics.”
“We do,” admitted Bob. “We’ll be there.”
They had brought their gymnasium suits with them, as a certain amount of physical culture was obligatory at Boxwood Hall; and that evening, when they went to the gymnasium, Bob, Ned and Jerry were assigned to a certain division, and after watching the football squad at work, they went in for their turns.
The strenuous adventures our heroes had gone through with in the past had given them good muscles and bodies particularly well adapted for athletic work. They were not finished performers in gymnasium work, though, as they very soon discovered, though they did not lack the nerve, which is needed in many of the exhibitions on the parallel bars, the rings, the rope, or the trapeze.
The instructor was showing the boys how to slide down a rope head first without the use of the hands, by passing the cable between the thighs and over the shoulder, under the chin.
“Now you try it,” said the instructor to Frank Watson, who was in the class with our friends.
“I’d rather not,” said the headstrong youth. “I strained my leg a little in the pole vault yesterday, and I don’t want to lame myself.”