“Honestly, fellows,” he said, his round face gloomy, “I don’t see how we can beat them. Of course, we have Jerry and Sandy, but we don’t have a runner to compare with their fullback, Tomkins.”
“What about Pepper March?” someone asked. “He scored six touchdowns for Valley View last year.”
“Yes, Quiz,” Sandy said. “What about Pepper? Where is he, anyway? You’d think he’d be here, the night before school opens.”
Quiz Taylor began to shake with laughter.
“D-didn’t you hear about Pepper?” he sputtered, his face crinkling with merriment. “Haven’t you heard about what happened to Stanley Peperdine March?”
“No. What happened?”
“Yeah, Quiz,” someone else said. “Cut the comedy, and let us in on the joke, too.”
Still chuckling, Quiz Taylor said, “Pepper won’t be home for another two weeks. A couple of the sailors aboard that ship they were on came down with one of those rare, tropical diseases. Pepper and his father had to spend the summer in quarantine.”
There was a roar of laughter at the expense of the unpopular Pepper.
Sandy Steele turned to his friend and said, “Well, Jerry, we may have had a stormy voyage, but I’ll bet we had a better summer than Pepper did.”