“I’ll be glad to play,” came from Ned Lowe. “It’ll be a change from touring. I get rather cramped sitting in the car all day. Since we started we’ve done nothing but ride, making a hundred and fifty miles or more a day.”
“Maybe we can get the motor-boat fellow to take a challenge across the lake before he goes back to Baldane,” suggested Gif. The man was still at the dock awaiting orders from the lads he had had for passengers.
“That’s the talk! We’ll send the challenge right away!”
The boatman was consulted and readily consented to leave the challenge at the Willoughby camp before returning to the Beldane hotel.
“We want you to put our baggage on check in the cloakroom until we get back,” said Dan. “And take good care of our auto, too. You can come back for us next Monday,” he added, after consulting Gif. And so it was all arranged.
In the letter to the Longley boys Gif explained about the arrival of the other lads and challenged their rivals to a game of baseball on their own grounds on the coming Saturday afternoon. If the challenge was accepted the cadets from both schools were to go to Beldane and there select an umpire.
The arrival of the challenge from the Colby boys created a great stir in the Longley camp. Ted Maxwell and a number of others were in favor of an immediate acceptance, but Flanders and his cronies demurred.
“I didn’t come here to play ball. I came to take it easy,” growled Flanders.
“I don’t want anything more to do with them,” put in Halliday.
“You were willing enough to go over there and rough-house the place,” came from Maxwell. “Why not be a real sport? If we don’t play them, when we get back to school they’ll tell everybody we were afraid.”