“Well, whatever his reason was, I’m the goat all right,” said Bobby, in a feeble attempt to put the best face on the matter.
“It isn’t only you, but it’s Rockledge that’s the goat,” amended Sparrow. “We’ll be licked out of our boots.”
“You fellows will have to play all the harder,” said Bobby. “Mr. Leith may change his mind when he comes to think it over. I have a hunch that Hicksley isn’t going to get away with such a whopper as that.”
“I’d like to have him by the throat and choke the truth out of him,” snapped Fred wrathfully.
“It would be a pretty big job to get any truth out of that fellow,” grunted Mouser.
“What did the old weather want to go and get so hot for all of a sudden?” burst out Pee Wee. “If it hadn’t been for that, the fan wouldn’t have been going and the whole thing wouldn’t have happened.”
This kick against nature struck the boys as comical, and the laugh that followed cleared the air somewhat and relieved their excited feelings. But for the rest of the day and evening, there was but one topic that held the attention of any of them.
Bobby felt blue and depressed. He would rather have had any other penalty put on him than to be ordered not to play on the team. The very sight of his glove and uniform made him miserable.
It would have been bad enough, even if he had been guilty of that special bit of mischief. But then he would have “taken his medicine” with as good grace as possible. But it made him raging angry to feel that he had been made the victim of a contemptible plot by such a fellow as Tom Hicksley.
What made it still more exasperating was the fact that he did not see any way to get at the real truth. Hicksley had been on the rear row of seats, and his only companions were Bronson and Jinks, who were just as bad as himself. No one but they had seen the egg thrown, if, as Bobby felt sure, Hicksley had thrown it. And now that they had put it on Bobby, they had to stand by the falsehood. One was as deep in the mud as the others were in the mire, and there was not a chance in the world of their confessing.