“That’s very nice of you to say so, but what about yourself?”
“I’m not so sure,” and Sid spoke dubiously. “That confounded Latin will be the death of me. I tell you what it is. I was never cut out for a classical scholar. Now, if they had a course of what to do on first base, I’d be able to master it in, say, a four years’ stretch. But I’m afraid I’ll go the way of our mutual acquaintance Langridge, and spend two years as a freshman, at which rate I’ll be eight years getting through college.”
“Oh, I hope not. You stand better than Langridge. He’s smart—not that you aren’t—but he doesn’t get down to it. It’s just like his baseball practice, if he would only——”
Then Tom stopped. He didn’t want to talk about the player whom he was trying to supplant on the nine. “Well,” he finished, “I guess I’ll turn in. We’ll have to see Dutch in the morning and learn what the new plans are.”
Housenlager and his fellow members of the freshman dinner committee found it advisable to make a change after what Sid and Tom had discovered.
“But we can’t alter the time or place of the feed,” explained Dutch. “It’s too late to do that. Anyway, there’s no danger once we get inside the hall, for we’ve arranged to have the doors bolted and braced and guards posted. The only danger is that they’ll get at some of us before we get to the place or that they’ll get at the eating stuff in some way and put it on the blink.”
“I shouldn’t think there’d be much danger of that,” spoke Tom. “Won’t the man who is going to supply it look out for that end?”
“I s’pose he will,” admitted Dutch, “so the main thing for us to do is to see that we get safely to the hall. I think we’d better not meet down near the bridge, as I proposed first. You know, we were all going in a body. I think now the best way will be for us to stroll off by ones and twos. Then there won’t be any suspicion. The sophs will be on the watch for us, of course, but I think we can fool them.”
“Then you mean for each one of us to get to the hall as best he can?” asked Sid.
“That’s it,” replied Dutch.