“Guess you did crack your head,” said Buck Hart, examining the wound. “There’s a lump there as big as a goose egg and a pretty bad bruise, too. Believe me, you are lucky, Birdie. If Thatcher hadn’t dragged you out when he did you’d be a dead one now.”
Pell looked at Thatcher gratefully.
“Did you save me, Thatcher? Thanks, old fellow.” And he held out a trembling hand.
“Don’t think of it,” said Jeff, shaking hands; “here, get some clothes on. You are shivering.”
Jeff and Buck somehow managed to get him into his clothes and to get him over beside a sizzling steam radiator, where they made him comfortable while they dressed themselves. And Jeff noticed with a feeling of contempt for Gould that during all their efforts to bring Pell around the older Sophomore had done nothing to be of service to his supposed chum.
“Fine kind of a friend he is,” thought Jeff, as he was crawling into a basketball uniform that he intended to use in lieu of the wet underclothing that he hung over the steam radiator to dry.
CHAPTER XV
ALL OUT FOR BASEBALL
But in spite of the efforts of the fellows to keep Pell’s accident in the pool a secret it became known throughout the school in a matter of hours.
Every fellow in the locker room realized that Pell had been breaking a rule,—a very strict rule, and while none of them approved of this and in their hearts felt that he deserved punishment, they were not willing to go back on him to the extent of making his misdemeanor and the resulting accident known. Indeed, while there were few among them who really cared very much for Pell they all felt that under similar circumstances they would want the fellows to stand by them and they tried to cover up the little Sophomore’s difficulties as much as possible.