Football -- Juvenile fiction; Schools -- Juvenile fiction
They didn’t see Jim again until the morning of the races. It was a
corking day, that Saturday, with a wealth of winter sunshine flooding
the world and only the mildest of northerly breezes blowing down the
river. The weather and the list of events ought to have brought out a
larger representation of the student body, but as a matter of fact by
far the larger portion of those who had assembled at ten o’clock were
contestants. Clem, yielding to the solicitations of the Committee,
had entered for three races at the last moment, and it wasn’t until
he had won the 220-yard senior event in hollow fashion from a field
of more than a score of adversaries and been narrowly beaten in the
quarter-mile race that he encountered Jim.
Jim had discarded his beloved gray sweater and was the cynosure of
all eyes in a mackinaw coat of green and black plaid. The green was
extremely green and the plaid was a very large one, and Jim presented
an almost thrilling appearance. Under the mackinaw, his lean body was
attired very simply in a white running shirt, and Clem addressed him
sternly.
“Want to catch pneumonia and croak?” he demanded. “Don’t you know you
can’t skate with that state’s prison offense on and that if you take
it off you’ll freeze stiff? Where were you when they handed brains out,
Todd?”
Jim grinned. “Hello,” he replied. “That was a nice licking you gave all
those other fellows. And, say, if you’d got going quicker in that other
race you’d have made it, easy.”
Clem was looking attentively at the mackinaw. Now he felt of it. “Say,
that’s some coat, son. Where’d you get it?”
“Back home.”
“I’ll bet it’s warm. I never saw one made of as good stuff as that is.
Any more like it where it came from?”
Jim chuckled. “I’m going to write pop to send down a couple dozen of
them,” he said. “You’re about the tenth fellow that’s asked me that so
far. I could sell a lot of ’em if I had ’em.”
“Joking aside, though, can I get one, Todd?”
“Sure. Pop sells them. I’ll give you the address if you want to send
for one. I’ve given it to a lot of fellows already.”
“Oh, well, if the whole school’s going to come out in them I guess I’ll
pass,” said Clem regretfully. “I suppose those are what the lumbermen
wear, eh?”
Jim nodded. “Lots of folks wear them. They’re mighty good coats. Only
six dollars, too. Better have one. Maybe pop’ll give me a commission.”
“Six dollars! I believe you’re trying to make a dollar rake-off on each
one! Say, what are you down for, Todd?”
“Down for? Oh, the mile and two miles. You?”
“Just the half. I’ll get licked, too. See you later. But, honest, Todd,
you oughtn’t to skate two miles in just that cotton shirt, you know.”
“Warm enough. It ain’t real cold to-day. Hope you win.”
But Clem didn’t, making rather a sorry showing in fact.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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