The boys themselves were becoming excited. They were fairly bursting with impatience to blurt out the whole story. George Baker was not telling it nearly fast enough to suit them. Tommy and Margery shared their impatience. Tommy’s face was working nervously and Margery was making a desperate effort to be calm. They felt sure that there was more to the story, more of interest to themselves than they could even guess.
They were not wrong in their surmise. There was more to tell, as they were speedily to learn.
“Are the prizes worth while?” asked Harriet.
“A silver cup for the winning team. It’s worth more than a hundred dollars, and will have the name of the winning club engraved on it. Then there will be individual prizes. There are second and third prizes, too, but I don’t know what they are. I didn’t ask Herrington, for the reason that I wasn’t interested. I was interested in the first prize. Our team will get it, of course.”
Harriet was regarding him with narrowed eyes now, her forehead wrinkled into lines of perplexity. The way George was looking at her set the girl to wondering.
“Who is your team, George?” she asked.
“Who is my team? Don’t you know?” he almost shouted.
“Naturally not. You haven’t told us.”
“They aren’t mind readers, George,” reminded Billy Burgess. “I’ll confess that you’ve almost got me guessing. You’ve so befuddled me that I’m beginning to wonder if I know who they are myself.”
The boys burst out into a jolly laugh.