There was no school that day. Experience had proved to the faculty that holding recitations on the morning of the Big Game was about as useless a thing as could be imagined. Many fellows headed for the village shortly after breakfast, but the players were not allowed that means of working off any superabundance of spirits. Instead, being instructed to remain out of doors as much as possible, they dawdled around from one set of steps to another and tried to be very jovial and carefree. The sun came through about ten and the trees glittered as though strung with diamonds. Then the diamonds turned into very wet water and dripped down fellows’ necks.
Bert and Hugh and Nick and several others were seated on the steps of Trow at about ten-thirty. Talk had been desultory and fragmentary for some time, and Nick, the only one of the group apparently unaffected by nerves, had just informed the rest candidly but for their own good that they were a “bunch of nuts,” when Mr. Bonner came into view down the steps of School Hall, looked this way and that and then walked briskly along to Trow. He had the appearance of one who, having completed a home-run, is informed by the umpire that he is out for not having touched second. Every fellow in the group there knew that something had greatly disturbed the coach’s equanimity, and when, pausing a dozen yards away, he called to Hugh, his tone confirmed the look on his face.
“Ordway, please!” he called. “Just a moment!”
Hugh arose and wormed his way between the others. Probably they all glanced curiously at him as he passed down the steps, but I doubt if any save Bert read the expression on his face aright. To Bert it was one of relief.
Hugh joined Coach Bonner and together they walked toward School Hall and disappeared through the entrance. Speculation was rife in front of Trow. Nick shook his head dubiously.
“Something’s gone to pot,” he said.
“Faculty’s jumped on Hobo, probably,” suggested another. “Thought, though, he was rather a shark for study.”
“It isn’t that,” said Nick. “What do you think, Bert?”
But Bert only shook his head. If it was what he really thought, it wasn’t a thing for him to talk about.