“It makes no difference,” replied Andy, severely. “Rules is rules. You can tell him I said we needed you, though. He will pass you, all right.”
And so it proved the next morning. The physical instructor merely looked Gerald up in his records, frowned a bit, and made a new entry in his book.
“All right, Pennimore. You can try for the team if you like. But I’m afraid you’re still a little weak for fast company in the mile run, my boy. But it will do you a lot of good. Tell Mr. Ryan that—but never mind; I’ll speak to him myself.” And Mr. Bendix, or Muscles, as the boys called him, jotted a memorandum on the tablet before him.
That afternoon the track and field candidates assembled in the gymnasium, and Gerald found himself toiling with the chest weights. Later Andy set him six laps on the running track, after which he plunged under a cold shower, to emerge feeling as though he could give Captain Maury seventy yards and beat him in the mile. The baseball candidates had begun their work in the cage the day before, and the locker-room that afternoon was a very noisy and very merry place. There were Alf and Dan and Captain Durfee and Wheelock and Richards and several more of the ball players that Gerald knew, and Tom and Arthur Thompson and Roeder and lots more of the track fellows.
Arthur Thompson, a boy of about Gerald’s age and a member of the Second Class, was rather a chum of Gerald’s. Arthur had secured second place in the pole-vault last spring, and was expected this year to get first. Arthur was rather heavily built for pole work, and his success in the event had been a surprise to most every one save possibly himself and Andy. He had very dark hair, a somewhat sallow complexion, and even his dearest friends would not have called him handsome. Gerald had started out by detesting him, but, as so often happens in such cases, had ended by liking him thoroughly. He and Gerald left the gymnasium together and walked across the Yard to a back entrance of Whitson. Here they climbed the stairs, and Arthur led the way into Number 20. At a table, bending absorbedly over a big stamp album, sat a youth of thirteen.
“Look here, Harry,” said Arthur, sternly, “what have I told you about those silly stamps? Haven’t I given you fair warning?”
“Please, Arthur, I was only pasting a few——”
“I’ve told you I’d pitch it out of the window if you didn’t let it alone for a minute. And I will, too. Now shove that out of sight and speak to our guest.”
Harry Merrow grinned as he closed the book.
“Hello, Gerald,” he said. “Isn’t he a fussy old thing?”