[CHAPTER I]
BACK TO SCHOOL
“In the good old football time,
In the good old football time!”
sang “Poke” Endicott, as he pulled a nice new pair of fawn-hued football pants from his trunk and reverently strove to smooth the creases from them. “Aren’t those some pants, Gil?” he demanded.
His room-mate turned from the window as the “mole-skins” were held up for inspection.
“Rather! You must have spent a year’s allowance on those, Poke.”
“Huh!” Poke folded them carefully and then tossed them in the general direction of the closet. “I’d hate to tell you, Gil, what they stood me. But they’re good for ten years; anyhow, that’s what the tailor man said. Those trousers, Gil, will descend from generation to generation, down through the ages, like—like—”
“A mortgage,” suggested Gil Benton, helpfully, as he turned again to the view of autumn landscape framed by the open casement. Just under the window, beyond the graveled path, the smooth turf descended gently to the rim of the little river which curved placidly along below the school buildings barely a stone’s throw away. (Joe Cosgrove, baseball captain, had once engaged, on a wager, to place a baseball across it from the steps of Academy Hall, and had succeeded at the third attempt. As Academy stands farthest from the stream of any of the buildings, Joe’s throw was something of a feat, and many a perfectly good baseball had been sacrificed since by ambitious youths set on duplicating his performance.) The Academy side of the river was clear of vegetation, but along the farther bank graceful weeping willows dipped their trailing branches in the water and threw cool green shadows across the surface. Beyond, the willows gave place to alders and swamp-oaks and basswood, and then, as the ground rose to the rolling hills, maples, already showing the first light frosts, clustered thick. Here and there the white trunks of paper-birches showed against the hillside.