“Glad to know you, Ware,” he said, as he shook hands. “Glad you’re coming out to help us.”
“I don’t believe I’ll be much help,” answered Allan.
“Oh, yes; bound to. I saw you run in the handicaps. That was a mighty pretty race you made. By the way, do you know Mr. Long? And this is Mr. Monroe. And Mr. Mason. Keep in with Mason. He’s office-boy on the Purple and writes criticisms of the track team.”
Allan shook hands with the three, while the group laughed at Stearns’s fling at the managing editor of the college weekly. Long was a startlingly tall fellow, with a crooked nose and twinkling, yellowish eyes, and Monroe was short and thick-set, and looked ill-tempered. Mason, Allan recognized as one of a half-dozen men whom he had seen about college and as to whose identity he had been curious. Mason was the sort of fellow that attracts attention: tall, broad-shouldered, with shrewd, kindly eyes behind glasses and a firm mouth under a straight and sensitive nose. He looked very much the gentleman, and Allan was glad to make his acquaintance. He was in the dark as to what position Mason really occupied on the Purple, and so the point of Stearns’s joke was lost on him. But he smiled, nevertheless, having learned that it is sometimes well to assume knowledge when one hasn’t it.
“See you again,” said Stearns. The others nodded with various degrees of friendliness and Allan took himself off. The track was in good condition to-day and held the spikes firmly. Allan jogged up and down the stretch a few times, trying his muscles, which on Saturday had felt a bit stiff after the mile run, and lifting his knees high. Then he started around the track. Half-way around he drew up behind Hooker.
“Hello!” said the latter. “Nice day, isn’t it?”
Allan agreed that it was, and the two went on together to the turn. There Hooker turned up the straightaway.
“Going to try starts?” he asked. “Let’s go up to the end there.”
Allan couldn’t see the necessity for becoming proficient in the crouching start until Hooker explained as they returned from a brief dash, in which the younger lad had been left wofully far behind.
“Sometimes,” said Hooker, “you’ll want the pole at the start, and if you’re placed two or three places away from it, you won’t get it from a stand, you see. But if you use the crouch and get away quick, you have a pretty good show of getting ahead of the men who have the inside of you. Let’s try it again. You give the signal this time.”