“No, but really! No joking, Woodie. What would—”
“Have a heart! Have a heart!” Lowell waved his hands protestingly at the doorway. “Boy, I’ve got problems! Don’t pester me with trifles like that!”
The football manager was off, taking the stairs four at a time. Clem went to the window and leaned over the sill. When Lowell emerged from the doorway below he hailed him.
“Oh, Woodie!”
“Yeah, what you want?” Lowell peered up blinkingly through the sunlight.
“Listen, Woodie,” went on Clem earnestly. “Haven’t you got half a dozen old footballs over at the gym that you can’t use?”
“Old foot— Say, what’s your trouble? What do you want ’em for?”
“To fill up this box,” jeered Clem. “Run along, sonny!”
Clem didn’t pass a very restful night. For one thing, Number 15 Haylow was hot and stuffy. Then, too, Clem and Lowell Woodruff and two other fellows had sought to mitigate the heat of the evening by partaking of many and various concoctions of ice cream and syrups, and his stomach had faintly protested for some time. He awoke in the morning, scandalously late, from what seemed to have been a night-long succession of unpleasant dreams. But a bath and breakfast set him right, and afterwards he completed the packing of Mart’s belongings. By rummaging about in the store-room he collected enough pieces of corrugated straw-board and excelsior and old newspapers to fill the top of the packing-case after a fashion, and he hammered the lid down with vast relief, addressed it with a paper spill dipped in the ink bottle and pushed it into the corridor. A visit to the express office completed his responsibilities, and, since it was then only a little after ten, he returned to school and took the path that led, between Academy and Upton Hall, and past the gymnasium, to the athletic field.