"The special rates to Springfield are very low," urged Jack. "I tell you what you can do;—just what I'm going to do. Bet your expenses on the game and then it will all be on Yale."
"And if we lose?" queried Varnum.
"Oh, well, if we lose, we'll only be hard up, just as we are now," was the assuring response.
"I see I have not been tutoring you in Pol. Econ. for nothing," said Varnum. "No, Rattleton, I'd give anything I could afford to see that game, but I can't afford anything, so don't stir me up about it."
"All right, have your own way. Come 'round and dine with me to-night."
Varnum assented, and Rattleton, calling out to his dog, "come along, Blathers," rode off to the stables. On the way to his room to change his clothes he met the other men of his club table going from Holworthy's room to dinner. He told them that Varnum was coming to his table, and warned them not to talk constant foot-ball all through dinner.
"I wish I could help that chap out somehow," he said, discontentedly; "he has got on to the tutoring dodge. He won't tutor me now, except when there is an hour exam. coming, and he knows I have got to go to somebody to be put through if I don't come to him."
On the following day the Harvard forces began to move on Springfield. The game was to be played on Saturday, but many men went on Friday afternoon, for there is great joy to be had in Springfield on the eve of battle. The Glee Club always gives a concert, after which there is a very fine ball, one of the Springfield Assemblies, I believe. There is also apt to be another ball, a "sociable" of the something-or-other coterie. Holworthy and Gray were on the Glee Club, and were going to the Assembly. The others decided to go to Springfield on that night also, and attend the other ball.
"Down with the bloated silk-stockings," declared Burleigh. "Let the kid-gloved dudes dally with the pampered aristocracy. We are the people; we'll go where we can turn in our waistcoats, stick our sailor-knots in our shirt fronts, and be right in the top flight!"
The Glee Club men had rooms engaged. Hudson was on the shooting-team, and therefore also had a room secured, and the two Jacks, Rattleton and Randolph, were going on one of the club sleeping-cars. Burleigh and Stoughton had no rooms, but were willing to take their chances of getting one. Indeed, these two very rarely failed on an expedition of this sort in getting the best of everything. They were both sons of the energetic West, besides which Stoughton was famed for his craft, and was the recognized Ulysses of "the gang." They had a very effective method of working together in a crowd. Ned Burleigh was six feet three, and his weight had never been accurately ascertained by his friends. Dick Stoughton, on the other hand, was of a slight and active build. On arriving at any town where there was a rush for the hotels, Burleigh would breast the crowd with all the weight of his broad front. Stoughton, following close at his back with both the portmanteaus, would swing them, one on each side of Burleigh's legs, about knee high. Thus they would cut their way through any crowd, and arriving at its front, Ned would take the baggage and come along by slow freight, while Dick dashed for the hotel.