"There! I guess he'll take notice, now!" exclaimed the joyous Nibs, stepping back from the board, and gazing at the poster proudly.
"And so will all the University," replied Jimmy, not, however, without a secret pride in the valor of his friend, after all; for Billy Shaw, the prospective opponent, had brought with him to Ann Arbor a country record for swift running that was not to be considered lightly, even by a sprinter of the attainments of Nibs Morey.
All efforts to match the two had thus far failed. It was Nibs' zeal, purely, though tempered, of course, by his fine conceit, that prompted the posting of the challenge now—a zeal to prove—perhaps to Jimmy, more than to the others—his wisdom, and the justification of his own abundant confidence. And the challenge thus publicly offered achieved the end that Nibs had hoped it might.
There is record in undergraduate history of the excitement that prevailed upon the campus the day after its publication. No one seemed to doubt Billy Shaw's acceptance of it. He would have to run now, or ever after hold his peace,—they said—an alternative not to the relish of a youth of his temperament. And he did accept the challenge, and he did run; and bets were made, and money was won and lost, all to the undying credit of Alma Mater, who looked on, smiling, proud of her sons in their glorious youth, their honor and their prowess.
II
For a week, now, the Gown had been speculating; placing its bets with the Town eagerly, enthusiastically, and many of those bets—sad to relate—were on the wrong side of the book, so far as Nibs Morey was concerned. When Jimmy, learning the way of the wind, informed his friend of the odds against him, with all the coldness of a perfect enmity, Nibs experienced his first twinge of uneasiness. For the Gown, loyal to its foreign upholder, Billy—in the excess of its patriotism and without regard to possible consequences such as unpaid laundry bills, and staved-off tailor accounts—had wagered against poor Nibs, who, though he was of the Gown, cannot be said to have been with it. He suffered the misfortune of having been born and reared within a scant stone's throw of the main building, the which, it may be noted in passing, he had, for half a dozen years, held as a grudge against his parents, to the perplexity of his sister Wilma, who found only a keen enjoyment in her college home and in the shifting aspects of the college life around her.
The event that Nibs longed for was only a week away, and his friend seemed to take rare delight in deriding the hardihood that had prompted the posting of the challenge.
"Well," Nibs said, at last, breaking his long legs at the knee, and rising from the table, laboriously, "maybe he will beat me,—but he won't do it hands down—he won't do it in a walk, anyway."
"Oh, I don't know," was the cool retort of Jimmy, and stepping down into the street he added, "you can't always tell."