When the busses passed through a village there was loud cheering, not only for Wyndham but for anything else that captured interest. At Peyton a much bewhiskered citizen leaning against a post in front of the general store made an instant hit. Three royal cheers were given for “Ostermoor”――though how the fellows knew his name must remain a mystery――and the surprised gentleman was the recipient of many compliments. Between the villages opportunities for “razzing” were fewer but never neglected. A faster car, passing a bus, was pursued by indignant cries of “Speedhound!” “Oooh, wait till I tell the Constabule!” “Hey, Mister! You’re hittin’ twenty!” “Oh, you Dare-devil!” “You pesky city folks, you!” All this, Clif found, helped you to forget that your luncheon, as light as it had been, had become a leaden lump and that there was a spot somewhere between the nape of your neck and the top of your head that felt like a small lump of ice! At Cotterville they pulled up in front of a small yellow frame building at the edge of the athletic field. Across a wide stretch of still green turf the school buildings peered back at them from behind nearly leafless trees. It was twenty minutes past one then, and the game was to start at two-fifteen, but already there was a trickling stream of folks crossing the far side of the field in the direction of the iron stands. Many automobiles, too, were in place beyond the ropes, and the occupants were having picnic lunches there. Above the grandstand a big brown flag bearing a white W waved and whipped in the wind. The sun was doing its best for the occasion. It made the freshly drawn lines of the gridiron gleam, gave the dying grass a real semblance of summer verdancy, found a clump of birches on the nearby hillside that still held their leaves and made a golden splendor of them and, flashing against the varnished surfaces of the parked cars, created blobs of light that dazzled the eyes. And over there, too, it discovered a fluttering blue pennant bearing a white W and illumined it gloriously.