“I cannot ask it, my boy,” said the Colonel. But Jim’s forehead furrowed slightly, and he said very feebly: “Go, Stacey; don’t—let the school—lose the cup.”
“Go!” cried Adelaide. “He wishes it.” And Stacey strode out to the track.
Milly told me afterward that she was greatly surprised, and not a little indignant, to see him take his place with the runners, who were mustering just in front of us.
“How’s Armstrong?” Mr. Van Silver called to him.
Stacey came nearer. “Badly hurt, I’m afraid,” he replied.
“Then I think it is very heartless in you to run,” Milly exclaimed. It was the only thing she had said to him that day. He flushed violently. “Jim begged me to do so,” he said, “or else you may be sure that I would not be here.”
The race was called, and Stacey threw himself into the “set,” his chin protruding with bull-dog determination, but Milly’s thoughtless remark had taken all of the spirit out of him. “He was the very last to get off,” said the trainer. “He’s running in awful bad form, too. Fifth from the front. What’s he thinking of to let Harrison pass him?”
Around they came, and Stacey looked appealingly to Milly, but with nose turned in the air, she was waving the Morse colours, snatched from a girl sitting near her, and applauding the Morse champion, Emerson.
The sight stung him. He would show her that he was a better runner than the boy she had selected as her favorite, and he put forth every energy, and gained rapidly.
“I told ’em,” said the trainer oracularly, “that Fitz Simmons would wake up, and sprint further on. He wasn’t running this first lap. He ain’t a-running now, he’s just taking it easy, to show us some tall running toward the finish, when he’ll have it all to himself.”