“Well, you did touch it, and you’d no business to. Wear your own things after this and let mine alone.”
“Oh, for-get it!” cried Dick, jumping up impatiently.
Perhaps Sandy misunderstood that move, for, dropping the sweater to the sod, he stepped forward and sent a blow straight at Dick’s face. The latter, seeing it coming, ducked at the last instant and then, as Sandy followed the delivery, brought him up short with a blow on the chin. After that there was a merry scrap while it lasted, which wasn’t long, for Billy Goode, who had an instant before sent the hurdlers away, and several of the fellows about the starting line, dashed in between.
“Here! Here!” cried the trainer. “What do you boys think you’re doing? Behave now, the both of you! Suppose someone had seen you! Right here on the field! Are you crazy?”
“He started it,” panted Sandy.
“Never mind who started it,” replied Billy severely. “I’m stopping it. You beat it in, Halden. You’ve no business loafing around here anyway. Didn’t Jimmy tell you to go to the showers? You’d be better off somewhere else, too, Bates, and not coming around here starting ructions!”
“I didn’t start any,” growled Dick. “He tried to slam me one and I gave it back to him.” Then, wiping his knuckles on his trousers, to the detriment of that garment, he managed a grin. “I’m sorry, Billy,” he said. “Maybe it was my fault, although I didn’t hit first.”
“Well,” grumbled the trainer, mollified a trifle, “don’t take chances like that again. It’s my duty to report the both of you, but maybe I’ll forget it if I don’t see you around.”
Sandy Halden had already gone off and now Stanley arrived, his eyes round with curiosity, and hauled Dick away in his wake. “What the dickens was the matter?” he demanded. “First thing I saw was you and Stanley dancing around like a couple of trained bears. I thought it was fun until I saw you land one. What did he do?”
Dick thought a moment. “Nothing, I guess. Nothing much, anyway. He found me wearing his sweater over my shoulders and told me to leave his things alone, and I lost my temper and got up to go away, and I guess he thought I was going at him and tried to land on my nose.”