The Custer School at East Hampton always put a snappy and thoroughly aggressive ball team in the field and Pennington always arranged to crowd that game past the middle of its season, so that there was no chance of the East Hampton boys catching her with an under-developed team.
It was the only over-night trip on the Pennington schedule and Coach Rice summoned the team to appear at the gymnasium ready to take the bus for the three-thirty afternoon train on Friday for a five-hour ride to East Hampton.
It was a lively party that gathered with suitcases, bats and gloves in the big gym. doorway when Terry McCall, the bus driver, swung his big yellow automobile stage down the drive and backed up to receive the load of passengers. Of course, the stage was not large enough to accommodate the whole squad of fourteen boys without crowding and there was a lively scramble for seats and some horse play before they all managed to wedge themselves in somehow and get adjusted as the bus started snorting and lurching toward the station.
They only just made the train. It stood puffing impatiently in the station when Terry swung his bus around with a flourish, and the boys streamed out of the rear door and rushed madly for the steps of the day coach. A train trip with a baseball team is always a merry party as Jeff knew for he had taken more than one as a member of the New City Y. M. C. A. team the year before, and he joined in the general fun and gentlemanly boisterousness they indulged in as they took possession of a day coach that held few occupants besides themselves.
But the boisterousness gradually subsided as hour after hour of wearying train travel rolled by, and long before they reached East Hampton even the noisiest of them had long since subsided, raising only an occasional appeal for “eats.”
It was a hungry crew of boys who detrained at East Hampton and made a rush for the Custer School stage that stood backed into the graveled approach waiting for them. And then the clamor that they raised once they got inside was a noisy call for food, for it had been arranged that they would take their evening meal, a little late to be sure, in the dining hall of the school whose baseball team they were to cross bats with the next day.
That evening meal, however, turned out to be a miniature banquet, for the managers of the Custer School team had arranged to have the boys of their squad eat with the Pennington group and a really elaborate spread had been arranged, which was concluded with speeches by the team captains and the coaches and any of the boys who could in any way provide entertainment “stunts.”
The last “stunt” on the program was a really clever dialogue between the Custer School captain, Roy Milliken, and the team’s mascot, “Spike,” a Boston bull dog of very likeable disposition. Roy and Spike talked to each other in “dog language.” Spike, apparently uninvited, jumped on top of the table and stood in front of Roy with one foot in a dish of olives. Roy pretended to be horrified at the dog’s conduct and proceeded to scold the animal in surly tones, whereupon Spike began to talk back in barks and growls until he seemed to work himself up to a furious pitch. The little act had all the fellows in stitches before it was concluded and the more they laughed the more Spike seemed to enjoy himself, barking and growling and raising a terrible to-do until Roy affectionately swept him off the table into his arms and gave him several caressing pats on the head before putting him on the floor where he proceeded to make the rounds of the boys in the room, getting acquainted with all the new fellows from Pennington.
Jeff loved dogs and when the animal got around to him he picked him up in his arms and stroked him and playfully pulled his ears, and the dog, satisfied, snuggled down in his arms and stayed there until the party broke up and the boys began to leave for their rooms.
Arrangements had been made to have the Pennington boys occupy extra rooms on the second floor of one of the school buildings during their stay and the entire squad was conducted across the campus by the boys of Custer School with whom they had become really chummy.