THE EIGHT-OARED VICTORS
[CHAPTER I]
GREAT NEWS
“And after this—the deluge, I suppose,” quoted Tom Parsons as he gazed moodily out of the window of his study, and watched the raindrops splashing on the ledge, running down the pipe, and forming one of many streams that trickled over the green college campus. “Is it never going to stop?” he went on, turning toward his three chums. “It’s rained now——”
“Oh, for the love of differential calculus!” cried Phil Clinton, “can’t you talk of anything but the weather, Tom? I’m sick of hearing it discussed.”
“No sicker than I am of hearing it pour,” retorted the first speaker.
“The rain certainly does seem to stick around,” added Sid Henderson, as he endeavored to arise from a decrepit armchair—one of the twins—that added comfort to the college study. “I’m so damp, and altogether gluey, that it’s all I can do to get up. Lend me a hand somebody!” he appealed.
“‘Friends, Romans, Countrymen, lend me your ears!’” recited Tom in the best schoolboy style. “Can’t you manage to assist yourself, Sid; or are you getting too fat?”
“Fat! Huh! I guess if you’d trained the way I did for those track games you wouldn’t be fat!” was shot out in protest.
“Train! Listen to him, Phil. Just because he won his big jump he thinks that’s all there is. Why——”
“Hold on,” put in Phil, quietly. “You fellows will get on each other’s nerves if you continue. And you’re certainly getting on mine. How do you expect me to bone away if you’re going on like this? That fussy alarm clock is bad enough—I don’t know why we tolerate the old thing anyhow—but when you two get to scrapping, and this confounded rain never lets up, why it’s the extreme edge, so to speak.”