The final game on the gridiron had been played, and the Westfield Varsity had won. Long hair was sacrificed to the barber’s shears, dirty suits and leather pads were laid away, and nose guards and helmets put upon the shelf until another fall. Then began a winter of more or less discontent, according as the lads liked or disliked study. Our heroes were about the average, neither better nor worse.
There was rather a more balmy feeling to the air than had been noticed in some time. The snow had gone, and the grass that had been brown and sear was beginning to take on a tinge of green. Cap Smith, mending a rip in his big catching mitt looked out of the window, yawned and stretched lazily.
“Too much study?” asked Bill.
“No, I think I’m getting the spring fever. How about you, Pete?”
“Same here. I’m tired of this measly Latin. Say, where is that new mushroom bat I bought the other day?”
“I don’t know, unless Whistle-Breeches borrowed it to prop his window up with. Jove! but it’s getting warm!”
“I like his nerve if he has,” and Pete made a hasty journey to the room of the lad at the end of the corridor, returning with the stick in question, and followed by the culprit himself.
“I didn’t know it was a new bat,” said Whistle-Breeches in extenuation. “Besides there won’t be any baseball for a month.”
“There won’t, eh?” retorted Bill. “I’ll bet they’ll have the cage up in the gym this week.”