“It’s a good thing that Colonel Colby didn’t enforce that rule he was going to put through of keeping officers out of athletic contests. If he had done that, we’d have been minus Jack and Fred for this game.”
“Gosh! how I’m going to miss old Colby Hall,” sighed Fred Rover. “At first I thought graduating and getting away was going to be fine. But when I think of what we’re going to miss in baseball and football and in the gymnasium and on the campus—well, I’m not so sure,” and his face clouded.
“Oh, well, we can’t be cadets and schoolboys all our lives,” consoled his cousin Jack. “Just the same, I’ll hate to give up baseball, and I’ll hate to give up being major of the school battalion, too.”
“How the Longley Academy fellows hated to see that silver trophy going to us,” put in Phil Franklin, who had gone along as scorer. “Some of the fellows looked as black as a thundercloud when the committee wrapped it up in that cloth and turned it over to Gif.”
“Well, I guess the fellows from Hixley High and Columbus Academy felt just as bad,” came from Spouter Powell. For the trophy was one which had been fought for by four of the schools on and in the vicinity of the lake.
“We’ve got the goods! We’ve got the goods!
Because we played good ball.
No matter what we try to do,
Old Colby’s got the call!”
chanted Andy Rover gayly. “I don’t see why Colonel Colby can’t add a Chair of Baseball to the curriculum,” he added, with a grin. “We’d have a whole lot of professors to fill it.”