CHAPTER X
A COIL OF WIRE
"Bonfires to-night, fellows—bonfires multiplied by seven and one more!" cried Captain Woodhouse as he gathered the victorious nine about him and tried to hug each member. "Well played, my hearties! Yo ho! and a heave, yo ho! You shall dine sumptuously this day, an it please ye!"
"Hold hard there!" came the laughing but calming voice of the coach. "No breaking of training just because you've won the first game. Not much! You've got to buckle down harder than ever from now until school closes."
"Not even a cigarette?" asked Holly Cross, with a wink at his chums.
"Or an ice cream soda?" added Bricktop, his blue eyes twinkling.
"Go on," answered the coach with another laugh, not taking the trouble to return an answer to so obvious a question. "They are going to cheer you. Get ready to give them a yell in turn."
The defeated team had gathered together. There was an air of sullenness about the members at losing the game, but this mood quickly passed under the entreaties of Pinky Davenport, who was a sportsman and "a good loser," as he besought his men to "perk up and wallop 'em next time." He called for three cheers for the victors, and they were followed by the Boxer Hall yell.
Back came three ringing acclamations and a "tiger" from Woodhouse and his mates, and their yell, as weird a combination of words and syllables as could well be devised, brought the whole concourse of spectators standing up in acknowledgment. Then came more cheering, and the nines disappeared into the dressing-rooms beneath the grandstand, while the crowds filed away.
"Well," remarked Sid as he walked along with Tom a little later, "it was a glorious victory, as the poem says. I don't exactly remember what it was all about nor how we did it, but ''twas a glorious victory.'"
"Now you're talking," was Phil Clinton's opinion. "Eh, Tommy, my lad?"
Tom was rather silent. He had cheered the nine until his throat ached, but somehow there was to him a hollowness in the winning.
"Too bad you couldn't play, old man," commented Sid. "I was almost hoping Langridge would strain his arm, and then"
"Don't!" exclaimed Tom quickly. "That's bad luck, and, what's worse, Sid, it's treason."
"Then give me liberty or buy me a seltzer lemonade, Patrick Henry!" declaimed Phil. "Honest now, Tom, weren't you just aching to get out and play?"
"I was," replied Tom so earnestly that the others looked curiously at him. "I never wanted so much in my life to get into a game. Why, I'd even been glad to act as backstop. But it's all right," he added quickly. "It was a great game, and maybe I'll have a chance to play next year if I live that long," and he laughed, but there was no mirth in it.
"Mighty pretty lot of girls at the game," observed Sid, as if to change the subject.
"That's what," agreed Tom, glad to get on a more congenial topic.
"Oh, wait until we play Fairview Institute," said Phil/
"Why?" from Tom.
"Why, that's co-ed, you know—girl students as well as boys. And, say, maybe there aren't some stunners among 'em! They take in all the games at home and some that aren't, and they have flags and a yell of their own. They know how to yell, too. I was over to a ball game there last year, before I thought of coming to Randall, and say, it was immense. There was one"
"Cut it out, if it's about a girl," advised Sid. "When you get on the dame question, you don't know where to stop. Sufficient to say that there are some."
"Yes, and then some more," added Phil. "Wait until we go there or they come here. Then you'll see something worth seeing."
"May the day come soon," spoke Tom with a laugh. "I sat next to a mighty pretty girl to-day all right. She had a flag of Randall colors, and when we won she waved it so hard she nearly put my eye out."
"Of course you made a fuss," said Phil with a grin.
"Of course. I turned to apologize and so did she, and I knocked her hat all squeegee and she blushed and I got red, and then—well, I up and asked her if she had a brother at college."
"That's going some," commented Sid. "What did she say? Did you learn her name? Where does she live?"
"Fair and softly, little one," advised Tom, with a sort of assumed superciliousness. "Trust your Uncle Dudley for that."
He walked on a few paces.
"Well?" demanded Phil.
"Is that all?" cried Sid.
"No," said Tom, provokingly mysterious about it.
"Go on. Tell a fellow, do."
"What's the use?" asked Tom. "I saw her walking off after the game with another fellow."
"Who?" demanded his two chums.
"Langridge."
"With him?" exclaimed Sid, and there was a new meaning in his tones. "Who was the girl?"
"Her name was Madge Tyler," replied Tom slowly.
"Madge Tyler!" repeated Sid. "Why, her brother used to go here. He graduated two years ago. He was a crackajack first baseman. And so Madge Tyler is going with Langridge?" he questioned.
"Or he with her," said Tom dryly. "I don't see that it makes much difference. Why, hasn't he got a right to?"
"Oh, I s'pose if you put it that way, he has," went on Sid. "Only" and he stopped abruptly.
"Only what?" asked Tom.
"Only—nothing. Say, here's a chance to buy me that seltzer lemonade. I think you ought to stand treat for Phil and me, Tom, seeing that if it hadn't been for us the game would have been lost and you wouldn't have met Miss Madge."
"I don't know that it has benefited me much," replied Tom.
"What do you mean, you old cart horse?" asked Phil, thumping his friend on the back. "Seeing the game won or meeting the pretty girl? I believe you said she was pretty."
"I didn't say so, but she is—very. But I meant about meeting her. Langridge seems to have a mortgage in that direction, I fancy."
"He makes me sick!" exclaimed Phil. "He and the airs he gives himself. But come on in here," and he turned toward a drug store. "I'm like a lime kiln, I'm so warm. It's your treat, Tom."
"All right, I'm willing."
"Did Miss Madge ask you to call?" inquired Phil as the three were wending their way toward college again.
"Yes."
"You don't say so! Well, it seems to me that for a new acquaintance you rushed matters fairly well."
"I forgot to add," said Tom slowly, "that I knew her before back in Northville where I live. She moved away from there some years ago and I didn't recognize her at first. But she knew me at once.'
"Wow! You old coffee percolator!" shouted Sid. "Why didn't you dish that out to us first, instead of letting us think you made an impression simply by the aid of your manly figure? So you knew her of old. Ha! ha! Likewise ho! ho! I begin to smell a concealed rodent in the woodpile."
"You didn't give me a chance," was Tom's quiet answer, and then he fell to talking about the game until he and Sid got to their room. Later there were bonfires and fun galore in honor of the victory.
Coach Lighton gave the nine no rest. Early the next Monday afternoon, as soon as lessons were over, he had them out on the diamond playing against the scrub. Somewhat to the surprise of members of the second team as well as that of the 'varsity, Tom Parsons struck out an unusual number of players.
"You fellows will have to bat better than this," growled Langridge when practice was over and the 'varsity game had been saved merely by a fumble on the part of a scrub fielder. "This won't do."
"Physician, heal thyself," quoted Captain Woodhouse with a grim smile. "You struck out twice, Langridge."
"I know it, but batting isn't my best specialty and it is for some of you fellows."
"True enough," admitted Kindlings gravely, "and we must brace up a bit for the game next Saturday with Fairview."
"The captain is right, boys," added the coach. "You must do some hard hitting."
"Or else Tom Parsons mustn't pitch so well," said Phil Clinton in a low voice to Sid. "How about it?"
"That's right. He's improving wonderfully. Langridge will have to look to his pitching arm."
At that moment the wealthy youth passed by Phil and Sid. He heard what they said, and if they could have seen his face then they would have been somewhat puzzled at the look on it. But neither Tom nor any of his friends saw.
It was the next day after the scrub game that as Tom was alone in his room, "boning" away on Latin, a knock sounded on the door.
"Come!" he cried, and, much to his surprise, Langridge entered.
"You're becoming a regular greasy dig, aren't you?" he asked pleasantly.
"Well, I've got to do some studying, you know. That's what I came here for."
"Yes, I know and all that sort of thing, but if you're going in for athletics you can't pound away at your books too hard."
"Oh, I guess what pounding I do won't hurt me," and Tom laid aside the volume, the while wondering why Langridge had called on him. Tom distinctly was not in the rich youth's set.
"I hope not," and the other's manner was becoming more and more cordial. "But I say, Parsons, don't you want to help us get one in on the sophs?"
"Sure. You can always count on me. What is it this time?"
"Well, you know the little open pavilion down near the river?"
"The one near the boathouse?"
"That same."
"Sure I know it."
"Well, you know according to ancient and revered college tradition that is sacred to the sophomores. None other but members of the second-year class may go there. If one of us freshmen is caught there it means a ducking, to say the least."
"So I've heard."
"Well, Kerr and I were in there the other day, for we heard that the sophs were off on a little racket, and we didn't think we'd be disturbed. We had a couple of girls there and were having a little confab when along came Gladdus and Battersby, grabbed us before we knew it and chucked us into the H2O, whence we floundered like drowned rats."
"Yes, I heard about it."
"So did the whole college, I guess. Now Kerr and I feel that not only have we been insulted, but that the whole freshman class has."
"I agree to that."
"And will you help us to get even?"
"Sure. What you going to do?"
"You'll see later. What I need now is a coil of wire. I want to know if you'll get it for me."
"Certainly, but why can't you get it for yourself?"
"Well, to tell you the truth, I've got about all the marks I can stand this term, and merely because I happened to play an innocent trick in class today I'm forbidden to leave the college grounds for a week. Just when I want to go to town, too. So I've got to get some one else to get the wire for me, and I thought you would. I'll pay for it, of course."
"Sure I'll get it," agreed Tom, not stopping to think that Kerr, the special chum of Langridge, might have acted for his friend. "What kind do you want?"
"I'll tell you. Here's the money," and Langridge handed over a bill, also giving Tom a memorandum of the kind of wire wanted and where to get it in Haddonfield.
"And one more thing," the other youth added as he prepared to take his leave.
"What's that?"
"Don't, for the life of you, tell a soul that you got the wire for me. I want it kept a dead secret. The trick will be all the better then. Will you promise?"
"I will."
"On your honor as a freshman of Randall College?"
Tom wondered at the other's insistence.
"Of course I will. Shall I swear?" and Tom laughed.
"No, your word is enough," spoke Langridge significantly. "Have the wire by to-night, and we'll teach the sophs a lesson they won't soon forget."