"Speaking of feet," said Gleason, "since you are not doing anything in football, why don't you go down to the track and do something there? You are a likely looking athlete, and you might be able to help old man Duffy win some points for Queen's. He needs candidates for every event. Nearly all the first string fellows graduated last year. Great chance for some young buck to distinguish himself."
"Why don't you go down and show him some speed yourself?"
"Me? Oh, I'd rather watch. You see I don't come of an athletic family. I'd rather set down what the other fellow does. Got to be some one to do that, you know."
The notion stuck in Frank's head. "I believe I'll do it," he said half to himself. "To-morrow I'll give myself up. I don't think anything will come of it, but I'd like to do something to help the school, and father has barred me out of football this year, but says I'll be hardened up enough if I stay out of it till next fall."
"You'll be hardened enough if you stay with me," said the Codfish, and Frank dived into his room, laughing.
CHAPTER XII.A TRY-OUT ON THE TRACK.
Track athletics at Queen's had not been in a very flourishing condition for some years prior to the opening of our story. The popular sports were baseball and football, and these took the pick of the fellows who had a desire to do some athletic work. Patsy Duffy, the trainer of all the teams, managed now and then to find some pretty good men in the sprints and short distance runs, and he had once sent a team of six down to the Interscholastic games at New Haven, which picked up eleven points in second and third places, and that, when you consider that the school had less than 200 boys to draw from, is not so bad as it might be.
But although Queen's was never in any great danger of winning the Interscholastics, the school was nevertheless nearly always represented by some one. Warwick was, in track athletics, as in every other of the sports, the natural rival of Queen's, and for the last two years had made away with the annual track contest by a good, wide margin of points. The trainer had gone over the incoming class pretty thoroughly for material and had not found much of it, so he was pleased when Frank stepped up to him at the track the next afternoon and said he would like to try for a place on the team.