“Don’t ask me; that’s some of Alf’s. Doesn’t it smell fierce?”
“Awful! Where’d you find it, Alf?”
“That soap,” responded Alf, haughtily, “is the best made, and extremely expensive. The delicious perfume which you mention and can’t appreciate is lilac. That soap costs me two and a half cents a cake, at Wallace’s.”
“Well, then, Wallace has at last got even for the glasses you broke there once,” laughed Dan. “I’ve noticed an unpleasant atmosphere about you for some time. Now it’s explained. All ready? Come on, then; let’s eat!”
[CHAPTER II]
THE S. P. M.
While our four friends are satisfying four very healthy appetites, let’s look about us a little. The place is Wissining, Connecticut, and Wissining, in case you happen not to be acquainted with it, is on the Sound, about equidistant from New Haven and Newport. Perhaps you can locate Greenburg better, for Greenburg is quite a city in a small way, and something of a manufacturing town. Wissining lies just across the river from Greenburg, and Yardley Hall School is about a half-mile from the Wissining station. It may be that you have never noticed it, even if you have traveled that way, for the railroad passes through the Yardley property by way of a cut, and the school buildings are not long in sight. But if you look sharp as your train crosses the bridge over the little Wissining River, you will see them describing a rough semicircle on the edge of a not distant hill; Clarke, Whitson, Oxford, Merle, and the Kingdon Gymnasium. Dudley you won’t see for the reason that it is situated back of the other buildings and across the Yard. Oxford is a recitation hall; but, besides class-rooms, it holds Dr. Hewitt’s apartments, the office, the laboratories, the library, the assembly hall, and the rooms of the two school societies, Oxford and Cambridge. The dining-room, or commons, is in Whitson.
The school property consists of some forty acres of hill, woodland, and meadow, and ascends gradually from the shore to the plateau whereon the buildings are set, and then descends as gently to the curving river at the back. Here are the tennis courts and the athletic field, the golf links and the boat house; and here, near the river-bank not long since, was the ice rink whereon Yardley defeated the Broadwood hockey team and won the first leg of the Pennimore Cup, the trophy presented by Gerald’s father.
Yardley usually holds two hundred and seventy students, their ages ranging from twelve to twenty. There are five classes known as First, Second, Third, Fourth, and Preparatory, and Yardley’s graduates have a habit of going on to Yale for the rest of their education, although there have been occasions when rash youths have preferred Harvard. Broadwood, which is situated some four miles distant as the crow flies, is a prominent feeder to Princeton, and so rivalries begun at these schools are often nourished at college. There have been other stories written about Yardley Hall, and so if you want a more detailed description of the school you have only to refer to a book called “Forward Pass,” though for my part I think you already have heard enough about it to answer our purpose. It’s a good school, is Yardley Hall; good in all ways; and, which is more important, it turns out some fine fellows. If I had space to set down a list of all the eminent government officials, scientists, writers, jurists, diplomats and the like who have graduated you would be vastly impressed. But I haven’t, and you must just take my word for it. I might add that it has turned out a large number of athletes who, if their renown has been more fleeting, have won honor and acclaim.