Boarding schools -- Juvenile fiction; Football stories; School sports -- Juvenile fiction; Teenage boys -- Juvenile fiction
There was a light behind the windows of Number 17 West as they passed
the courtyard, and Clif pictured Walter Harrison Treat up there
rearranging his shoes for the fourth time and chuckled. Kemble asked
what the joke was and Clif explained. Kemble declared that Treat must
be a pill, adding: “I wish you and I had got together, Bingham. I’m
with a Second Class fellow named Desmond, Billy Desmond. Not a bad
sort, but a bit snifty because he’s been around here a couple of years.”
“I guess Treat feels sort of superior for the same reason,” mused Clif.
“I don’t want to be harsh with Desmond, because he’s a First Team man;
plays tackle, I think; and he might be useful. I say, you’re going out
for practice to-morrow, aren’t you?”
“Yes. I haven’t heard anything about it, but I suppose they want
candidates.”
“Of course they do. Did you bring togs?”
“Some old ones. I’ll get others if――it’s worth while.”
“Oh, you’ll get to play somewhere. Desmond says there’s a lot of
rivalry amongst the class teams. And then there’s the scrub, too.”
“I’ll be lucky to make that, I guess. The fellows here look awfully big
and husky, Kemble.”
“Yes, there’s a guy at my table who must be nineteen if he’s a day,
and if he doesn’t top six feet I’ll eat my hat! Say, I wonder if we
can’t fix it to get together in dining hall. Suppose they’ll let us?
I’ll find out to-morrow. There’s a fruit store over there, and I think
I smell peanuts!”
Going back, Kemble explained, while he cracked peanuts steadily, that
he hadn’t been able to do very well at supper. “Mental exhaustion, you
know. I was all in when Wyatt let me go. I ought to hate that guy,
but I don’t seem to. He surely handed me some hot ones, but I guess
I deserved them. What’s the good of knowing so blamed much about the
queers who wrote books a couple of hundred years ago? Heck, it’s all I
can do to half keep track of the guys who are doing it now! Wyatt asked
me to tell him what I knew about Scott, and I said he was a mighty
clever shortstop, but I didn’t know his batting average. But, gosh,
he wasn’t talking baseball, he was talking about the fellow who wrote
‘Ivanhoe’!”
“I saw you from my window when you were making some of those brilliant
sallies,” laughed Clif, “and you certainly did look unhappy, Kemble!”
“I was! Say, drop the ‘Kemble,’ will you? I’m generally called Tom.”
“I like Tom better. My name’s Clif, short for Clifton.”
“I know. I heard your father call you that. That’s a real classy name.”
Clif reflected that he hadn’t thought of his father for a long while,
and felt sort of guilty.
“Not much style to Thomas,” the other was continuing. “My middle name’s
Ackerman. That was my mother’s before she married. When I was a kid I
used to write my name T. Ackerman Kemble, but the fellows got on to it
and called me Tackerman, and then Tak. Mother used to call me Tommy,
but I had to lick a chap in school for doing it. It was all right from
her, but I couldn’t stand for it generally.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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