“Oh, he’s a dead ’un now; he’s gone to Harvard,” answered Tom.
“What did he want to go there for?” asked Dan, who had already decided on Yale, quite indignantly.
“Search me! What does any fellow want to go there for?”
“Well, it’s lucky for Yale some fellows do go,” laughed Alf. “If they didn’t we wouldn’t have anyone to beat!”
“Well, there’s something in that,” grunted Tom. “But I’ll tell you fellows one thing, though. Some day those Harvard Johnnies will take their hands out of their pockets, work up a coaching system like they have at Yale and everlastingly wallop us for keeps!”
“Oh, you run away and play!” scoffed Alf.
“All right. You just wait and see,” replied Tom unruffledly, returning to his letter.
“What’s Tom think he’s doing?” asked Dan of Alf.
“He thinks he’s a little Hague doing the arbitration act,” replied Alf, “but what he’s really doing is making a mess. Rand—you know Paul Rand?—he’s basket-ball manager, or thinks he is. Well, he tried to make dates with Broadwood for three games and got high and mighty and tried to dictate things with the result that Broadwood refused to have anything to do with us. And I don’t blame her. We won last year, you know, and so Rand thought we could lay down the law. Broadwood didn’t see it that way. So Tom is trying to make a noise like a Dove of Peace. He’s writing to the Broadwood captain, and I’ll bet he gets sat on for his trouble.”
“That’ll be all right,” replied Tom, folding and sealing his letter. “I’ve offered them their choice of dates for the second game and told them we’d play the third anywhere they liked. They’ll come down and make terms. And when they do—” Tom put the stamp on with a bang of his fist—“we’ll lick them so hard that they won’t know whether they’re coming or going!”