Examinations began two days later, and Laurie had other things to worry about than blue roadsters or even Kewpie’s non-participation in baseball games, for, just between you and me, Laurie and mathematics were not on very friendly terms, and there was at least one other course that caused him uneasiness. Yet, should I fail to mention it later, he did scrape past, as did Ned and, I think, all others in whom we are interested. But he wasn’t certain of his fate until a week later, which accounts in part for the somewhat perturbed and unsettled condition of mind that was his during the rest of the present week.
On Wednesday Hillman’s scored another victory, and Laurie aided. Mr. Mulford put him to catch at the beginning of the sixth inning, and he performed very creditably during the remaining four. He made one “rotten error”—I am repeating his own words—when, in the eighth he pegged the ball a yard over Lew Cooper’s yearning glove and so allowed a steal to second that, a few minutes later, became a tally. But otherwise he did very well behind the bat and made one hit in two times up. George Pemberton pitched the game through, and Kewpie remained lugubriously on the bench. Afterward he had quite a good deal to say about Mr. Mulford, none of which was very flattering. Hillman’s had put the game on ice in the fifth inning, Kewpie averred feelingly, and it wouldn’t have hurt Pinky or the team’s chances to have let him pitch a couple of innings!
“And there’s only Saturday’s game left,” mourned Kewpie, “and that’s with Crumbie, and she’s better than we are and there isn’t one chance in a hundred of my getting into it! Gee, I should think folks wouldn’t make promises if they don’t mean to keep ’em!”
Laurie, who was half of Kewpie’s audience, Hal Pringle being the other half, reminded the speaker that Pinky hadn’t really promised, but his tone lacked conviction. He, too, thought that the coach might have used Kewpie that afternoon. Kewpie was still plaintive when Laurie remembered that the morrow held two examinations and hurried off for a brief period of study before supper.
I have already intimated that Laurie was not quite his usual care-free self that week, and the same is true to a greater or lesser degree of most of the other ninety-odd students. Finals are likely to put a fellow under something of a strain, and, as a result, normal characteristics are likely to suffer a change. The sober-minded become subject to spells of unwonted hilarity, the normally irrepressible are plunged in deepest gloom, and the good-natured develop unsuspected tempers. All this is offered as plausible partial excuse for what happened on Friday.
CHAPTER XXII
THE FORM AT THE WINDOW
Ned had been through a hard session that had not ended for him until after four o’clock, and he was very far from certain that his answers to Questions V and VIII were going to please Mr. Pennington. A game of golf with Dan Whipple arranged for four o’clock had not materialized, and Ned had returned to No. 16 to spend the remainder of the afternoon worrying about the Latin examination. About 5:30 Laurie came in. Laurie had a bright-red flush under his left eye and looked extremely angry.
“What did you do to your face?” asked Ned.
Laurie viewed himself in the mirror above his chiffonier before replying. Then, “I didn’t do anything to it,” he answered a bit sulkily. “That’s what Elk Thurston did.”