Since that cheerful day when they had whipped the Blackport nine on the ball field, Pence and his friends believed they could beat Yansey and his comrades at any game. Yansey's own pet expression, "Nothing to it!" was forever on the lips of Ben, Pudge and Kirby when they spoke of the coming rowing contest.
"But you and I have been told, Jawn," Rex drawled, talking the situation over with the big fellow one day, "that rowing races aren't always won in the boat."
"Hey?" exclaimed Midkiff. "Who told us that bunk?"
"They're often won at the training table and in the gym.," chuckled Rex, who dearly loved to get a rise out of his Old Hall room-mate.
"Oh, scissors!" observed Midkiff.
"Those chaps aren't training, you know. Neither are we as we should, for that matter. But they all dally with the cunning little coffin-nail, even Pudge. They eat everything and anything—and any-how. They lie around after eating like a boa constrictor assimilating a heifer; and then they take exercise too violently. Some of them puff, like the Spoondrift's exhaust, two minutes after they get to work."
"What did you expect when you handed the crew over to Horrors?" sniffed Midkiff.
"What I expected has nothing to do with what I want," Kingdon responded with some appearance of gloom. "Don't want it told all along this coast that a bunch of us Walcott Hall fellows joined a rowing crew that won't even have a look-in when we go up against these local chaps."
"What you going to do?"
"What would you suggest, Jawn? Come, Old Wise Head, give us a boost."