“I rather thought, if you don’t mind, sir, that I should like to speak to the fellows, but our time is so short that I must go right home to pack.”
“Then I’ll have the team go to the gymnasium directly. It won’t interfere with classes very much, for I don’t imagine, in view of the excitement about your resigning, that recitations are going very well.”
And rising from his desk, Mr. Maxwell went to the various rooms, summoning the members of the team and substitutes, while Phil went directly to the meeting place.
As he looked about the gymnasium, whose walls were decorated with the various trophies won by members of Parker School during its fifteen years of existence, a lump rose in his throat. For he had often gazed upon them before and had hoped that he should be able to place upon its walls the most coveted emblem of all, the pennant betokening the baseball championship of the interscholastic league.
Going over to the spot where were the footballs, with the scores of the games in which they had been used marked upon them, he was fondly fingering one bearing the legend Parker 12—Mercer 6, 1910, a victory in which his work at fullback had played no mean part, when there was a patter of footsteps and in rushed a group of excited, eager boys.
For the moment, as they beheld Phil standing before the footballs, they were hushed. Then, as they began to sense his feelings, one of them shouted:
“Three cheers for good old Phil!”
Lustily they were given, and they were about to be repeated when another group of boys entered and began to groan and catcall.
“Stop that—instantly,” rang out the stern voice of the principal, who was close upon their heels, unbeknown to the boys.
But though the hoots were silenced, those who had uttered them kept up a continual growling and grumbling among themselves, even after Mr. Maxwell had mounted the instructor’s platform, at one end of the gymnasium, and rapped for order.