CHAPTER XXI.THE LOSS OF A RINK.
It was a very open fall that first year of Frank's at Queen's School, and despite the fact that the boys who were inclined to the game of hockey prayed fervently for good ice, Jack Frost held off. Several times it threatened to freeze up, and there was a great polishing and sharpening of skates and seeing to the leather straps.
"When the ice comes we'll get up a hockey team," said Frank to Jimmy one day, meeting him in the yard. "Neither of us will get a chance at the school team, so we might as well have some fun ourselves."
"And who will we play with, I'd like to know, supposing the ice did come, and supposing we could get up a team?"
"I'll bet you the best hockey stick in Milton that there'll be lots of chances. There'll be so many scrub sevens out that there won't be enough ice. Are you game for it?"
"Sure thing," said Jimmy. "We can rope Lewis in. There's a fellow in my entry named Hazard who drops in evenings to borrow a book. He says he can skate. Lewis isn't a half bad skater, and he's so fat that he would naturally get in the way of the puck without being very quick. So he would be a good goal tender."
"Good enough," returned Frank. "That makes four, and we can pick three other fellows up somewhere. Be on the look out and I'll keep my eye out, too. Meantime, pray for the ice."
But all things, as the copybooks say, come to him who waits. About the middle of December sharper weather came on, and then one afternoon the mercury began to slide down the tube of the thermometer. At six o'clock in the evening it stood at zero, and the boys covered the distance from their rooms to the dining hall supper table and back in record time, owing to the biting air.