ARRY and Dick were sitting on the lower step of the little flight leading to the Cottage porch. It was between ten and eleven of a perfect May morning. The crumbling red bricks paving the short path which led to the curving drive glowed warmly in the sun, and the little blades of grass springing up between them were very green and pert. The campus looked vastly different to-day from what it had that January afternoon when Harry had introduced Dick to Ferry Hill. To-day there was the bluest of blue skies overhead, and instead of the waste of snow the grass stretched away on every side fresh and verdant. The Grove was fast clothing itself in new, tender green, and beyond, at the foot of the long hill, the river dimpled and shone in the sunshine. Something of this occurred to Harry, I think, for she stopped pulling Snip’s ear—an operation which that member of the group, half-asleep in the sunlight, thoroughly approved of—and asked:
“Dick, do you remember the day I brought you up here to show you the school? And how cold it was? And how nasty and dismal everything looked? After you’d gone I never thought for a minute that you’d come back.”
“Neither did I,” answered Dick with a little laugh. “I guess I’d have stayed at Hammond and liked it all right if I hadn’t got there before school opened. It seemed so beastly lonesome over there, and the fellows who stayed during vacation were such a ghastly bunch, that I just had to get out. It was a toss-up whether I’d come over here and try this or hit the trail for home.”
“Are you sorry you came?” asked Harry anxiously.
“Not a bit,” replied Dick with convincing heartiness. “I like it, and I like you and Chub and Roy. You’ve all been so decent to me, you know. You’re all three mighty good fellows, Harry.”
Harry flushed and looked pleased.
“I—I guess we liked you,” she said. “I’m glad you like Roy and Chub,” she continued. “I just love them! They’re—they’re the nicest boys I ever knew, I guess; and you too, Dick.”
Dick shook his head sorrowfully.
“I’m jealous,” he said. “You put Roy and Chub first.”
“Well, you see, I’ve known them longer, Dick,” answered Harry earnestly. “You don’t mind, do you?”
“Not a bit,” he laughed. “Besides, next year they won’t be here, and you’ll have to like me best.”
Harry looked grave.
“That’s the trouble,” she sighed. “When you get to like a boy he goes and graduates and then you never see him again. I don’t know what I’ll do when Roy and Chub go.”
“Don’t know what I’ll do, for that matter,” growled Dick. “It’ll be beastly lonely at first. Maybe I won’t come back myself.”
“Oh, Dick, you must!” cried Harry. “Why, then there wouldn’t be any one! You’ve got to come back! You will, won’t you, Dick?” “Maybe.”
“No, promise!”
“All right, I’ll come, Harry. You and I’ll have to comfort each other, eh? Say, isn’t this a dandy day? Hope it’ll be like this Saturday, eh?”
“It’s going to be,” said Harry decisively. “John says we’re in for a spell of settled weather, and he knows all about it; he never misses.”
“Well, I hope he’s right. I want a good hard track on Saturday.” “Do you think we can beat them?” asked Harry.
Dick hesitated, then shook his head slowly.
“Honestly, I don’t. But I’m not telling the fellows that. It doesn’t help any, that sort of talk. I tell them we can win if we do our level best; and we can; the trouble is that every fellow can’t do his level best when the time comes. Lots of them will be nervous, you know; can’t help it. I may be myself. By the way, Sid got a note from their manager yesterday asking if we would mind changing the order of events so that the mile run will come last; he says two of their men who are going to run the mile are in the low hurdles and they wouldn’t have time to get their wind. I told Sid to write and say it would be all right. It doesn’t matter to us, although I suppose if we insisted on having the things run off the way we first agreed to we’d have a better chance to win the meet.”
“But it wouldn’t seem quite fair, would it, to make those boys run in the mile just after they’d been hurdling?”
“Well, it would be fair enough, I guess; that’s their lookout, you know; only—well, I don’t want to win that way. I say let every fellow have an even chance, and then the one that wins is the best man.”
“Are you going to practise this afternoon?” Harry asked.