“I guess so. What’s your best time for the mile, Gerald?”
“I don’t quite know. Andy said he thought I did it once in about five minutes in the cross country, but that was on a dirt road, of course. I guess I could do a lot better than that on the cinders.”
“Rather! Besides, any chap can do better in warm weather. Even if you shouldn’t make the team this spring, Gerald, you’d get a lot of fun out of it, and it would do you good besides. It’s a bit unfortunate, though, that Maury runs the mile himself. It’s awfully hard to crowd the captain off the team.”
“Oh, I wasn’t expecting to do that,” Gerald replied, with amusing naïveté. “I just thought maybe I could get a place. Has Broadwood got good mile runners?”
“How about that, Tom?”
“Yes, I think so. Usually she’s better on the distances than anything else. But we beat her in the cross country, and maybe our men are as good as hers this year. I suppose Goodyear and Norcross will both enter for the mile.”
“Are you going to be on the team this year, Alf?” Gerald asked.
“No, I guess not; not unless I’m pretty badly needed. What’s the use? Both Rand and Bufford can beat me in the sprints.”
“You might crowd a Broadwood man out in the trials, though,” said Tom. “And you wouldn’t have to train much; your baseball work would keep you in trim.”
“Wouldn’t it be fine,” asked Gerald, enthusiastically, as he felt of his damp shoes, “if we won the baseball and the track meet, too, this year? That would be a clean sweep, wouldn’t it? Football, cross country, hockey——”