Perry had his second time-trial on the seventeenth of the month and Skeet announced the time as 10 3/5 for the hundred and 24 3/5 for the two-twenty. Neither performance was remarkable, but Perry had a strong belief in his ability to better them both; and, in any case, he had performed as well as any of his teammates except Lanny and Kirke in the hundred and Lanny in the two-twenty. Lanny told him he had done finely and assured him that in another fortnight he would be able to cut another fifth of a second from his time. “And if you do,” said Lanny, “you’ll stand as good a chance for second place as any of the fellows. I don’t think that Springdale has a sprinter who can do better than two-fifths this year. It will be a corking race for second place!”
Perry was encouraged and his enthusiasm arose to new heights. For the next week he clamored for another time-trial, but Skeet denied him. Instead, he insisted on Perry working well over his distance for days after that trial, and neither he nor the other sprinters were once allowed to show their real speed.
Meanwhile, Perry was observing such strict rules of diet that Mrs. Hull was in despair. Perry’s natural liking for pie and cake was sternly repressed and his mother became frequently quite impatient and said that training was a piece of foolishness and that Perry would soon be only skin and bones unless he ate more. There seemed to be some justification for her fears, for the steady work on the cinders was certainly carving Perry pretty fine. He had not been by any means fat before, but now he was getting down to his muscles, and one morning when his mother surprised him on his way to the bath and viewed the slimness of his legs as revealed by a flapping dressing-robe, she sent up a wail of alarm and forthwith sought the Doctor, declaring that “this running just had to be stopped or Perry would starve to death before their eyes! He looks right now,” she said, “like one of those Indian famine victims!” But the Doctor declined to become concerned. “He’s better off as he is, Mother,” he replied. “A fifteen-year-old boy doesn’t need fat.”
“But he’s not eating anything!”
“You mean,” the Doctor chuckled, “he’s not eating pie and cake and a mess of sweet truck. I’ve failed to notice, though, that he has ever refused a third helping of meat and vegetables lately! Suppose, instead of pie and chocolate layer-cake, you make some simple puddings, my dear; tapioca, rice, corn-starch. I guess he will eat those all right; and they’ll be a lot better for him.”
Mrs. Hull retired unconvinced, but afterwards forbore to predict disaster when Perry refused pie. Experiments with the simple desserts the Doctor had suggested were fairly successful. Perry referred to a diet-list that was pinned beside his bureau and relaxed to the extent of partaking sparingly of the puddings.
Fudge, too, was denying himself prescribed dishes, although with far less philosophy than was displayed by his friend. Pie with Fudge was a passion, and cakes containing oozing jelly or soft icing filled his soul with beatitude. When all else failed, he fell back on doughnuts. To be cut off from these things was a woeful experience to Fudge. Once he had “trained” for the Football Team, but that training had been a very sketchy performance; nothing at all like the awful self-denial he practiced—or, at least, strove to practice—now.
“I don’t mind not eating starchy things,” he confided to Perry one day, “but this breaking away from the table when the pie comes on is fierce! I haven’t had a hunk of pie,” he added drearily, “for three weeks, and there’s a place right here”—he laid a sympathetic hand over the third button of his vest—“that won’t be happy until it gets it!”
However, to make up for the discomforts of dieting, he had the satisfaction of accomplishing Herculean stunts with the twelve-pound hammer. Partridge already viewed him as a probable point-winner, for he had nearly equaled Falkland’s best performance and had out-distanced Thad Brimmer by four feet. It was well that Partridge, and Guy Felker, too, dealt out praise and encouragement to Fudge, for the temptation to backslide in the matter of pie dogged him incessantly. There was one tragic night when he lay in bed and fought for all of an hour against the haunting vision of three raisin pies sitting side by side in the pantry downstairs. What eventually vanquished temptation was the knowledge that if he stole down and cut into one of those pies his mother would know it. And after all the fine-sounding speeches he had made to her on the subject of denying one’s appetite for the sake of the School, he hadn’t the heart for it.
Now that the School had “taken up” athletics it was a lot more fun practicing. Whereas heretofore scarcely a dozen fellows had watched the performances of the Track Team, now the daily practice was almost as popular as baseball and squads of critical but enthusiastic youths stood about the track and applauded and urged on their friends. The hammer-throw was sufficiently spectacular to attract a large gallery every afternoon, and I’m not denying that Fudge strutted a little when, having tossed the weight far away across the field, he allowed some admiring acquaintance to help him on with the crimson dressing-robe he affected.