"I!" shouted all of the boys, who did not forget their grammar so far as to say "Me!" instead. Really, the eagerness of the boys to play ball had never before been equalled in the memory of any one present, and Will Palmer cooled off some quite warm friends by his inability to choose more than two boys to complete the quartette for a common game of ball. It did the disappointed boys a great deal of good to hear the teacher's bell ring just as Will Palmer "caught himself in" to Grayson's bat.
"You play a splendid game," said Will to Grayson as they went up stairs side by side. "Where did you learn it?"
Joe Appleby, who was on the step in front of the couple, dragged just an instant in order to catch the expected information, but all he got was a bump from Palmer, that nearly tumbled him forward on his dignified nose, as Grayson answered,
"Oh, in several places; nowhere in particular."
Palmer immediately determined that he would follow his new schoolmate home at noon, and discover where he lived. Then he would interview the neighbors, and try to get some information ahead of that stuck-up Joe Appleby, who, considering he was only four months older than Palmer himself, put on too many airs for anything. But when school was dismissed, Palmer was disgusted at noting that at least half of the other boys were distributing themselves for just such an operation as the one he had planned. Besides, Grayson did not come down stairs with the crowd. Could it be possible that he was from the country, and had brought a cold lunch to school with him? Palmer hurried up the stairs to see, but met the teacher and the new boy coming down, and the two walked away, and together entered the house of old Mrs. Bartle, where Mr. Morton boarded.
"He's a boarding scholar," exclaimed Benny Mallow. "I've read of such things in books."
"Then he'll be stuck up," declared Joe Appleby.
This opinion was delivered with a shake of the head that seemed to intimate that Joe had known all the ways of boarding scholars for thousands of years; so most of the boys looked quite sober for a moment or two. Finally Sam Wardwell, whose father kept a store, broke the silence by remarking, "I'll bet he's from Boston; his coat is of just the same stuff as one that a drummer wears who comes to see father sometimes."
"Umph!" grunted Appleby; "do you suppose Boston has some kinds of cloth all to itself? You don't know much."
The smaller boys seemed to side with the senior pupil in this opinion; so Sam felt very uncomfortable, and vowed silently that he would bring a piece of chalk to school that very afternoon, and do some rapid sketching on the back of Appleby's own coat. Then Benny Mallow said: "Say, boys, this old school must be a pretty good one, after all, if people somewhere else send boarders to it. His folks must be rich: did you notice what a splendid knife he cut his finger-nails with?—'twas a four-blader, with a pearl handle. But of course you didn't see it, and I did; he used it in school, and my desk is right beside his."