Page:The purple pennant (IA purplepennant00barb).pdf/102

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
THE PURPLE PENNANT

abandoned, for they had reached the field and confidential conversation was no longer possible.

Not only the baseball candidates were out to-day but some forty-odd aspirants for positions on the Track Team. These were clustered at the further side of the inclosure where the coach and trainer, "Skeet" Presser, were, rather dubiously it seemed, looking them over. Guy Felker, eighteen years of age and a senior, was captain this year, and Arthur Beaton was manager. Beaton was checking off the candidates from a list he held and Captain Felker was inquiring of no one in particular "where the rest of them were." Sixty-four names had gone down on the notice-board in the school corridor and only forty-four had shown up. "Skeet" explained the absence of a number of the delinquents by reminding Guy that fellows couldn't practice baseball and report for track work both. Guy consented to become slightly mollified, and, Manager Beaton having completed his checking, the coach and trainer took charge.

"Skeet" was a slight, wiry man of some thirty years, with a homely, good-natured countenance and a pair of very sharp and shrewd black eyes. He had been in his time a professional one- and two-miler of prominence, but of late years had made

a business of training. He was regularly employed

84