Adams’s was the house of the instructor who lived at the athletic field. It contained a schoolroom for such boys as were condemned to prepare the next day’s lessons before they left the field in the afternoon, and quarters for a limited number of boarding pupils. “Adams’s!” exclaimed Pete. “What good is that? A half-dozen little kids who play on the fourth or third, and a few older fellows whose parents are abroad or can’t stand them at home. There wasn’t a fellow there last year who did anything for the school.” “There was Pitkin,” Sumner remarked. “He’d have made the second crew if he hadn’t caught the measles.” “He might,” responded Talbot, in a tone which implied that he probably wouldn’t. “But what’s Pitkin, anyway?” “Ben Tracy is going there next year,” went on Sumner, “and that cousin Louis of his who lives in Worcester, and some one from New Jersey. There may be some other new fellows.” “The usual orphan asylum!” commented Talbot, savagely. “It’s four to one that none of ’em will be good for anything. You always see things about one hundred per cent better than they really are.” “That’s not half so bad as seeing them one hundred per cent worse than they are, as you do, you old growler!” retorted his friend, with a laugh. “They can’t be a hundred per cent worse,” maintained Talbot. “That’s a logical impossibility. It would bring ’em below the zero point.” And then, being boys, in spite of their advanced age and the seriousness of their interest and the fact that both, avowedly at least, were putting every available minute into their preparation for the next week’s battle with the Harvard preliminaries, they wrangled for a good quarter of an hour over the possibility—logical, actual, or theoretical—of things being a hundred per cent worse than they were without reaching the vanishing point. The reader will be spared this argument. If he is a boy, he can manufacture it for himself; if a grown-up, he has only to listen quietly to a knot of boys waiting in idleness for a bell to ring or a train to appear, and he will understand how it is done. When the discussion had run its length, they recurred naturally to the first theme of conversation. It was Pete who reintroduced the topic of the new league. “Whether Smith is straight or crooked,” he said, “he certainly expects his school to come out ahead. I’d give something to beat him at his little game.” “Wouldn’t it be great!” Sumner’s exclamation was like an anticipatory smack of the lips; his eyes were fixed in a fervent but unseeing stare on the blank wall, his face beamed with delight at the mental foretaste of the joys of triumph. “We may do it, too!” “And we may not!” answered Talbot, rising. “Let’s get after those French sentences.” ----------------------------------------------------------------------- CHAPTER II THE CUP