“Well, Pell,” he said, still with a suggestion of sarcasm, “you are nearly as late as Thatcher and Grenville. Can’t you— Why, what’s the matter, boy?”
Pell had closed the dining room door behind him and started on obviously unsteady legs toward his table. Two spots of color burned in his cheeks and his eyes were strangely bright. As he started to step past the Headmaster, he paused momentarily and tried to steady himself. Then as he stepped out again he suddenly collapsed. His trembling legs gave way under him and he dropped in a heap on the floor.
Dr. Livingston and Jeff reached down and lifted him to his feet. Then, with the whole school looking at them, the Headmaster gathered the boy up in his arms, exclaiming:
“Why, you’re sick, Pell—terribly sick, with a high fever. Thatcher, call Dr. Stout.”
But there was not need for Jeff to call the physician. When the little Sophomore collapsed, Dr. Stout had jumped up from his place at the head of the junior school table and hurried through the crowd of boys to the side of the Headmaster.
Together they carried the boy out of the building and across the campus to the infirmary, while Professor Reisenberg brought order in the dining room and made the students start on their meal.
Neither Dr. Stout nor the Headmaster returned to the dining room while the students were eating, and when the boys left the hall the conclusions they reached among themselves were that Birdie Pell was very ill.
And such proved to be the case, for in the morning it was announced from the chapel platform that the boy had developed a slight case of pneumonia and that Dr. Stout had spent the night fighting to keep it from getting any more serious. The shock of the accident along with the exposure had proved too much for Pell.
For two weeks he lingered in the infirmary, with Jeff and Wade and Buck Hart and many other boys frequent visitors to his room, when he was permitted to receive them. Meanwhile, however, indoor practice had continued with increasing enthusiasm among the members of the squad of sixteen. Honey Wiggins, big George Dixon and Cy Gordon, the pitching candidates, were warming up to their task of working out their arms, and with Tad Sloan, the captain and regular catcher of last year, and Al. Canner and Mickey Daily acting as substitutes, the three slabmen were shooting balls across the gym. with real vigor, sometimes even trying curves and shoots when Mr. Rice would permit them to unlimber all they had for a brief period.
A batting cage, almost entirely surrounded by corded netting, was installed at one end of the gym., too, and the fellows began to discover how pleasant it was to swing a bat once more. With the corded netting draped all around the room to enmesh a stray ball, the candidates were permitted to slug as hard as they cared to, and they went at the work of finding their batting eye with a will.