I have said that Maple Ridge went home to bed, if not to sleep. Naturally, after such a night of adventure and excitement sleep was very far from the thoughts of most of the boys, and both North and South Dormitories discussed the events for a long time after the last light was out. But there was one boy who spent little time in conversation, and that was Jack. It seemed as though an hour of a fireman’s life was just what he needed to quiet his nerves! By the time he and Sam were back in their room Jack was nodding, and, although Sam would gladly have talked for a long time, Jack fell asleep quickly and soundly, in spite of the fact that his right hand, surreptitiously wrapped in a dampened handkerchief, was smarting and throbbing under the pillow.
Saturday dawned clear and hot, with scarcely any breeze stirring the leaves of the trees on the campus. It was a morning when hot coffee looked supremely distasteful, when appetites proved capricious and the clink of ice in the big water pitchers was music to the ear. As Gus Turnbull remarked when, breakfast over, a number of the fellows made themselves comfortable in the shade in front of North, it “only needed a silly locust up there somewhere to make it August.”
“It’s going to be some hot for the game this afternoon,” observed Steve Walker, plucking a particularly juicy grass-blade and inserting it between his teeth.
“Lucky if it doesn’t rain,” said Tyler Wicks, casting a knowing look at the dazzling blue sky above the tree-tops.
“There’s sure to be a thunder-storm.” This from Midget Green, cross-legged at the edge of the group and as near Ted Warner as he could get.
“What do you know about it, kid?” asked Milton Wales, tossing a pebble at him.
Midget caught the missile deftly and shook it between closed hands. “I do know,” he answered. “You always have a thunder-storm on a day like this. You—you can feel it in the air.”
“Midget’s rheumatism is troubling him,” suggested Ted gravely. “Any one seen Dolph since breakfast?”
“Yes, he and Shay are up there; I guess they’re making out the batting list,” answered Harry Smythe, nodding his head in the general direction of the upper floor of North.