“No; it’s for Professor Tines,” replied the messenger, and Phil breathed a sigh of relief as Wallops passed on.
Garvey Gerhart, who, with Langridge, was standing near Phil at the time, started. Then a curious look came over his face.
“Langridge,” he asked the sophomore, “have you anything to do?”
“Nothing special. Why?”
“Well, if you haven’t, come along with me. I’ve just thought of an idea.”
“They’re mighty scarce,” retorted the former pitcher. “Don’t let it get away.”
“Take a walk over by the chapel, and I’ll tell you,” went on Gerhart. “There isn’t such a crowd there.”
Phil and Tom, with the two girls, were soon on the way to the co-educational college. The trip was enlivened by laughter and jokes. Madge and Phil seemed very good friends, and, as for Tom, though he wondered at the sudden companionship that had sprung up between the quarter-back and the pretty girl he had once been so anxious to get away from Langridge, he could not help but congratulate himself on knowing Ruth. Still, he could not altogether understand Madge. He had been fond of her—he was still—and he knew that she had liked him. The slender tie of relationship between them was no bar to an affection that differed in degree from cousinly. Yet Madge plainly showed her liking for Phil. Could it be, Tom thought, that she was jealous of him, and took this method of showing it? He did not think Madge would do such a thing, yet he felt that part of her gaiety and good spirits, when in company with the handsome quarter-back, were assumed for some purpose.
“If it wasn’t that Ruth is such a nice girl, and that Phil and I are such friends, I’d almost think that he and I were—well—rivals,” thought Tom. “Oh, hang it all! What’s the use of getting sentimental? They’re both nice girls—very nice—the—the only trouble is I don’t know which I think the nicer.”
The two chums left the girls at the Fairview College campus, for it was getting late. Tom shook hands with Ruth, and then walked over to Madge to say good-by. She had just finished speaking to Phil.