“And the swindle is,” puts in Telson, “that just as I was spurting for the last twenty yards Watkins took my water. I could have fouled him, you know, but I didn’t care to.”
“Fact is,” says Parson, insinuating himself under the cords, greatly to the indignation of some other small boys near, “it’s a chowse letting Watkins enter for the juniors. I’m certain he’s not under thirteen—is he, Telson?”
“Not a bit of him!” says Telson, who has also artfully squeezed himself into the front rank hard by; “besides, he’s a Limpet, and Limpets have no right to run as juniors.”
“What is a Limpet?” asks Captain Cusack of his son.
“I don’t know what else you call him,” says young Cusack, rather surlily, for he is very wroth at the way Telson has sneaked himself into a rather better position than his own; “he’s—he’s a Limpet, you know.”
“Limpets,” says a gentleman near, “are the boys in the middle school.”
“Rather a peculiar name,” suggests the captain.
“Yes; it means an inhabitant of Limbo, the Willoughby name for the middle school, because the boys there are supposed to be too old to have to fag, and too young to be allowed to have fags.”
“Ha, ha!” laughs Captain Cusack, “a capital name;” and he and the gentleman get up a conversation about their own school days which beguiles the time till the bell sounds for the great race of the day.
The starting-point is a little below where our friends are standing, and the race is just three times round the course and a few yards at the end up to the winning-post. Only four runners are starting, three of whom have already distinguished themselves in the hurdle-race. Wyndham, the school captain, is that tall, handsome fellow with the red stripe in front of his jersey, who occupies the inside “berth” on the starting-line. Next to him is Ashley; also wearing the school stripe; and between Ashley and the other schoolboy, Bloomfield, is Rawson, the dreaded Londoner, a practised athlete, whose whiskered face contrasts strangely with the smooth, youthful countenances of his competitors.