“I didn’t think they had that spurt in ’em.”
“And yet we seemed to be rowing pretty well. I guess it takes more than one season to make a winning eight.”
Silence followed these discouraging observations on the part of the four inseparables as they sat in their room the evening following the beating of the first and second shells by the Boxer Hall crew. There had been a meeting of the coaches with the Randall rowers immediately after coming off the water, and several plans had been talked over, involving a shifting of the crews. But in the end it was decided to wait another day or so.
There was no disputing the fact that Randall had expected at least the varsity boat to keep up to, if not beat, their rival. And they had failed. It was a bitter pill to swallow, with the time of the regatta so close at hand.
“It sure was rotten,” said Tom musingly, as he sat staring vacantly at nothing. No one took the trouble to comment on his last remark. They had about exhausted their stock of bitter reflections and observations.
“Something’s got to be done,” went on Tom. Still no one answered him. The fussy little alarm clock ticked on, as though trying to be cheerful in the midst of all that gloom. It was as though it said:
“Cheer—up—I’m—here—
You’ll—win—next—year!”
“I wonder what we can do?” Tom mused on.
Sid shifted uneasily in one of the easy chairs. Phil duplicated in the other. Frank turned to a more comfortable position on the old sofa, thereby bringing forth creaks, groans and vibrations of protest from the ancient piece. Tom was trying to get used to an old steamer chair, that had been picked up, with other relics, at an auction held by a retiring senior the previous June, but as the chair had lost one leg, which had been replaced by part of a Turkish rocker, and as the foot-rest had, in some former day, been broken off and put back upside down, Tom’s effort to be at ease was more or less of a failure.