“I hear you,” murmured Ted. “Go on kicking. Nobody’s going to miss you if you go back to Deal Beach tomorrow. We could have got on well enough without you, anyhow. You were simply asked because we thought you’d feel hurt if you weren’t.”
“I like your nerve!” gasped Nick. “My word! Who’s been doing the work for five days out there? Trying to get drive into you chaps is like pulling teeth! Why, you miserable sandy-haired——”
“Oh, come on,” begged Bert. “I’m getting hungry. Anyone want to wash up? Come along if you do. You’ll have to wipe your hands on your handkerchiefs, though. They haven’t given us any towels yet.”
“What’s the good of washing if we’re going in swimming later?” asked Nick, sprawling off the window-seat.
“Because for once, old son, you’re dining with gentlemen,” Ted answered, gripping the smaller youth by the shoulders and propelling him towards the door in the wake of Bert.
“Honest?” wailed Nick. “I’d much rather dine with you, Ted!”
CHAPTER II
PLAYERS AND COACH
A few minutes later the three boys were crossing the campus unhurriedly and with an impressive disregard of “Keep Off the Grass” signs. And three good-looking, healthy, well-set-up youths they were. Their bare heads—there wasn’t a hat among them—showed three distinctly different colors. Ted Trafford’s hair was sandy, Bert Winslow’s black, Nick Blake’s reddish-brown. Between sandy hair and brown lay a matter of four inches in height, with black hair halving the difference. In build the trio were again at variance. Ted was a big, broad-bodied chap, Bert was slenderer, without being thin, and Nick was at once short and slight. Although Nick was only five months Bert’s junior—and Bert was seventeen—his smallness made him appear much younger. He had a thin face, deeply tanned, and gray eyes. Nick’s usual expression was one of intense, even somber, thoughtfulness. He had, in fact, the appearance of a boy with a deep and secret sorrow. But in his case appearances were deceptive, or, if he had a sorrow, it was merely that there are only a certain number of ways to create mischief and that he had pretty well exhausted them all.
Bert Winslow was a very normal-looking fellow with good features, a healthy color under his tan and a pair of eyes so darkly blue that they seemed black. Ted’s features were more rugged, like his body, and, if such a thing is possible, his complexion was as sandy as his hair. He had a wealth of freckles and two rather sleepy-looking brown eyes very far apart. Ted’s countenance expressed good nature first, and after that a sort of quiet purposefulness. One wouldn’t have expected brilliant mental feats of Ted, but one would have expected him to succeed where physical strength and dogged determination were demanded. Ted thought slowly, reached conclusions only after some effort, and then stuck immovably to his conclusions. He had been three years at Grafton School and during that time his great ambition had been to captain the football team in his senior year. He had attained that ambition and had now substituted another, which was, to put it in his own words, “Knock the tar out of Mt. Morris in November!” Having accomplished or failed in that, Ted would undoubtedly drag another ambition from the recesses of his mind. But at present that was enough. With Ted it was always “one thing at a time.”