“How about your rooms here? Haven’t got one I could have after Christmas recess, have you?”
“Yes, there’s one empty. It isn’t as good as—as the one you saw, Gary, but it’s not bad.”
“I’ll come around and have a look at it some day. Jones’s is the limit! Good night.”
“Good night,” answered Jim tiredly.
Then he went upstairs to face the sympathy of Gil and Poke and Jeffrey.
[CHAPTER XXIV]
HAWTHORNE COMES TO CONQUER
The day of the Hawthorne game dawned cold and gray, with a chill breeze out of the east that held a tang of the ocean thirty miles away. Hawthorne came along, nearly two hundred strong, early in the forenoon and took possession of the village, taxing the capacities of the railroad restaurant and the various lunch rooms to the limit. At Sunnywood Gil and Poke, veterans though they were, showed unmistakable nervousness all the morning, and it took the required efforts of Jim and Jeffrey to amuse them. By eleven o’clock the sun had peeped for an instant through the gloom, promising better things for the afternoon. The football team dined at twelve that day, so at Sunnywood the dinner hour was set forward correspondingly. At one Gil and Poke, happy and cheerful now that the time of waiting was past, set off to the field.
“If you don’t win, Poke Endicott,” called Hope from the porch as the boys started down the road, “I’ll never speak to you again!”