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Read Ebook: The Grammar School Boys in Summer Athletics by Hancock H Irving Harrie Irving
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Ebook has 1941 lines and 48998 words, and 39 pages
"Hold up, Dave!" Prescott advised. "You started it, you know. You will have to show that a joke is just as funny whether it's going or coming."
"That's right, old chap," agreed Dave, halting and beginning to cool. "Greg, come here and shake hands."
"You shake hands with Tom," Holmes retorted suspiciously. "I appoint Tom my substitute, with full powers."
"I'd sooner fight Tom than you," mused Dave, gazing down at Reade, who did not appear to be very much disturbed. "Tom is the fellow who's always bringing his appetite along on the finest days that heaven has sent us."
Dick Prescott lazily drew out his watch and glanced at it. Then he rose, remarking:
"You may stay here and get all the comfort you can out of nature, Dave. But it's half past five and I guess the rest of us will want to be nearer to the source of kitchen odors."
"Whew! If it's any such time as that I'm going to move fast," cried Harry Hazelton, leaping to his feet. "At our house supper is on at six o'clock, and anyone who gets in late has to take what's left."
"Are your folks so poor as that?" laughed Tom.
"Hardly," returned Harry. "But both dad and mother are sticklers for everyone being in his seat on time."
"Coming, Dave?" Dick called, looking back.
"Oh, yes," grunted Darrin. "But I hate to see all of you fellows running as though you didn't know whether you'd ever get another meal."
"I wonder what is Dave's sudden grouch against the eats," Tom mused aloud. "I've seen him at a few meals, and he was always a clever performer."
"Probably Dave has been eating too much for this time of the year, and has a touch of indigestion," Greg laughed.
Darrin overheard the discussion as he came along, but he did not choose to enlighten his friends. However, unintentionally, Greg had touched upon a part of the trouble. Dinner, that Sunday, at the Darrin cottage, had been unusually tempting, and Dave had eaten heavily. For that reason, when he had joined the crowd in the early afternoon, Dave had felt just a bit sluggish. The walk out into the country had roused his digestion a bit, and had left him in just that state where he could contentedly lie on the grass and doze half of the time.
On this bright Sunday all six of our Grammar School boys had attended church and Sunday school as usual. Then, the day being so fine, they had met and gone away on this tramp, which had ended in a "resting match" on the cool grass under the shade of trees.
And now, on this glorious June Sunday afternoon, we find our schoolboy friends enjoying the sacred day quietly, yet looking forward to the opening of the contests on the diamond between the three local Grammar Schools, the North, Central, and South Grammars.
The road they had chosen on this Sunday afternoon was one over which they had seldom traveled. It was not the road to Norton's Woods, to the great forest, nor yet the one that went by the "haunted schoolhouse." It was in a wholly different direction from Gridley.
"It's a long way home, this," complained Tom Reade, as the boys plodded along the dusty highway. "And I'm hungry."
"Hungry?" snorted Darrin. "Of course you are. You fellows sang a verse to me a while ago. Tom, how do you and your fellow-porkers like this lay?"
Taking a deep breath, Dave started to sing a travesty, to the air of "America."
"Stop it," ordered Tom threateningly, as he advanced upon Darrin.
"Stings, does it?" inquired Dave sarcastically.
"Yes, it does," Reade retorted bluntly. "To my mind 'America' is as sacred as any hymn ever written, and I won't hear it guyed! That's no decent occupation for an American boy."
"That's right," nodded Greg Holmes.
"Well, I won't yield to any of you in being American to the backbone," Dave retorted hotly.
"Prove it," said Tom more quietly.
"I'll prove it by my whole life, if need be," Darrin went on warmly. "Tom Reade, I'll be glad to meet you when we're sixty years old, talk it all over and see who has been the better American through life!"
The other boys were grinning now, and Dave and Tom, catching the spirit of the thing, laughed good-humoredly.
"But this does seem a mighty long way home," Dan complained.
"I can show you fellows a shorter way, if you want it," Prescott proposed.
"We all live on Missouri Avenue. Show us," begged Hazelton.
"It's through the woods," Dick continued. "I warn you that you'll find some of it rough going."
"Then I don't know about it," Greg replied with fine irony. "We fellows are not very well used to the woods."
"It's twenty minutes of six," declared Dan, glancing at his watch. "Some of us are in danger of eating nothing but cold potatoes tonight if we don't get over the ground faster. Find the short cut, Dick."
"It starts down here, just a little way," Prescott answered. "I'll turn in when we come to the right place."
Dick and Darrin were now walking side by side in advance. Right behind them came Greg and Dan, while Tom and Harry, paired, brought up the rear.
"In this way," called Dick, turning sharply to the left and going in under an archway of trees. It was over velvety grass that he led his chums at first. After something like an eighth of a mile the Grammar School boys came to deeper woods, where they had to thrust branches aside in making their way through the tangle.
"My Sunday suit will look like a hand-me-down by the time I get home," muttered Greg Holmes.
"It does now," Dave called back to him consolingly.
"I will, if the rest of you fellows will," challenged Darrin quickly.
"The truth is out," Tom burst out laughing. "Darry, by that slip of the tongue you admitted that you've been eating too much and that you're all out of sorts."
Dave did not deny. He merely snorted, from which sign of defiance his chums could gain no information.
They had gone another quarter of a mile through the woods when Dick, now alone in the lead, suddenly halted, holding up one hand as a signal to halt, while he rested the fingers of his other hand over his lips as a command for silence.
"What is it?" whispered Darrin, stepping close.
"Fred Ripley, Bert Dodge and some of their fellows," Dick whispered, at the same time pointing through the leaves.
"Well, we don't have to halt, just because they're around," retorted Darrin, snorting. "If they try to pick any trouble with us we can give 'em as good as they send. We've done it once or twice already."
"But we don't want to go to fighting on Sunday, if there's any way to avoid it," young Prescott urged, at which four of his chums nodded their heads approvingly.
"I'm not looking for any fight, either," muttered Dave. "Yet it goes against the grain to halt just in order to let that gang slip by without seeing us."
"There are five of us against your single vote, Darry," Dick reminded him. "Let us have our way."
"Well, we don't need to skulk, do we?" queried Dave.
"Oh, no," Dick assured him. "All we will do is to keep quiet and not bring on a fight with that tough lot."
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