This familiar formula met with the usual groans and hoots, and Kernahan grinned about the tent. Starting to withdraw his bullet-shaped head with its scant adornment of carroty hair, the trainer's eyes fell on Allan. He picked his way over the tangle of legs.
"Well, are you done up?" he asked. Allan shook his head.
"That's the boy, then!" continued Billy, heartily. "You'd better come out Monday and we'll see what you can do. Did you ever run much?"
When the trainer had gone, Hooker called across:
"Why, when Billy takes a fancy to you, he just merely works you to death. You weigh when you get over to gym and then weigh again, say, three weeks from now. You won't know yourself."
A laugh went up. Rindgely chimed in with:
"You'll find your work different from winning a mile with a couple of hundred yards handicap."
Allan had only had one hundred and twenty, but he didn't think it worth while correcting Rindgely, who was evidently rather sore over his defeat. Harris unexpectedly took up for him.
"He didn't have that much handicap, Larry; and if he had, it wouldn't have made any difference to you, you old ice-wagon. What was the matter with you, anyhow?"
Rindgely entered into elaborate explanations, which concerned the state of the track, the injustice of the handicapping, and many other things, and Harris laughed them to scorn.
"Oh, you're just lazy," he jibed. "Your name's Lazy Larry."
A howl of delight went up, and Allan looked to see Rindgely become angry. But, after a moment of indecision, he added his chuckle to the general hilarity. Allan turned to Harris.
"I was rather done up after the run," he said, "and some fellow must have lugged me over here. Did you happen to see who he was?"
"Yes; one of your class, a whopping big fellow named Burley. Know him, don't you?"
Harris picked up his togs and hurried off. Allan would have liked to walk back with him to the gym, but he thought the junior might think him "fresh" if he offered his company, and so he started back alone. It was almost dark now, and the lights in the college yard and in the village were twinkling brightly when he reached the corner of Poplar Street and turned down that elm-roofed thoroughfare toward his room. Poplar Street ends at Main Street in a little triangular grass-grown space known as College Park, and Allan's room was in the rambling corner house that faces the park and trails its length along Main Street. Allan thought his address sounded rather well: "1 College Park" had an aristocratic sound that pleased him. And since he had been unable to secure accommodations in one of the dormitories, he considered himself lucky to have found such comfortable quarters as Mrs. Purdy's house afforded.