“Join the gang,” ended Martin, jumping up. “Fellows, the occasion demands a celebration!” He went to his partly unpacked trunk and dug out a tin cracker box which he placed triumphantly on the table. “And here’s the wherewithal!” A generous section of a chocolate layer-cake and many doughnuts came to light and were hailed with acclaim.
“Wait a sec!” said Bob. “We’ve got some ginger-ale. I’ll fetch it. Keep ’em off the cake till I get back, Mart!”
“I’ll do my best,” Martin assured him, “but you’d better hurry. I know that gleam in Joe’s eye of old!”
Bob made what was probably a record trip to Lykes Hall and return, arriving anxious and breathless and laden with four bottles of ginger-ale. Then Martin cut the cake in four equal wedges, doled out the doughnuts and bade them “Go to it!” For a minute or two conversation was taboo, and then Bob held his bottle aloft and, speaking somewhat thickly, offered a toast.
“Gentlemen, I give you Mr. Willard Harmon, the brand plucked from the burning, the lamb saved from the slaughter, the – the – ”
“The innocent victim of a deep-dyed plot!” supplied Martin.
“The full-back who was only a half!” cried Joe.
“The gold brick!” laughed Willard.
“Charge your glasses, gentlemen! To the – the Brand!” And Bob drank deeply, with mellow gurgles.
“The Brand!” chanted Joe and Martin, and followed the example.
Afterwards they reviewed the afternoon’s events in the utmost good humor and with frequent laughter. Martin’s account of sitting on the step outside the door and reading choice bits of the school catalogue to the prisoner was especially amusing, and Willard revived the laughter when he supplemented gravely: “It was that bit about the open plumbing in the gymnasium that decided me! I couldn’t resist that!”
When, finally, Bob and Joe had taken themselves off and the roommates were preparing for bed, Martin said: “Look here, what about your trunk?”
Willard shook his head ruefully. “It’s at Lakeville by now, I suppose, and I’m likely to run short of shirts before I get it. I’ve got only one in my bag.”
“You can wear mine, I guess,” answered Martin. “Better telephone to the station the first thing in the morning and get the agent to have them send it back.”
“Maybe the quickest way would be to go over and get it myself,” suggested the other.
“No you don’t! You stay right here! We went to too much trouble to get you to let you go over there and forget to come back!”
“No fear,” laughed Willard. “I’ve paid my money here and I’ll have to stick now! Honest, Proctor, is Alton a better school than Kenly?”
Martin paused in the act of disrobing and looked gravely judicial. “Well, we like to say it is,” he answered cautiously.
“Is it bigger?”
“Not much. They usually have a few less students.”
“But the faculty here is better?”
“Hm: well, I wouldn’t go so far as to claim that. Maybe it used to be, but Kenly enlarged hers a couple of years ago.”
“I see. How about athletics: football and baseball and so on? Do we usually beat Kenly?”
“Oh, I reckon it’s about a stand-off. One year we win at football and she wins at baseball. Or we win at both and she gets the track championship and the hockey series. Call it fifty-fifty.”
“Well, then, what about the – the buildings and location and all that?”
“No comparison as to location.”
“Oh, Alton’s got the best of it there, eh?”
“Alton?” said Martin contemptuously. “I should say not! Why, this place is stuck right down in the village, you might say. Kenly’s got about thirty acres of land on the side of a hill: trees and brooks and fields – why, say, she’s got four gridirons and four diamonds and a quarter-mile running track and a regular flock of tennis courts!”
“Sounds good,” commented Willard. “What about the buildings over there?”
“They’re all right, too. Guess they’re as good as ours, anyway. There are more of them. She’s got a corking gymnasium. It would make two of ours!”
Willard sighed discouragedly. “But you fellows kept telling me how much better Alton was than Kenly!”
Martin grinned slowly. “Sure! Why not? That’s patriotism. Every fellow’s got to think his school better than the other school!”
“Oh! Then Alton isn’t really any better than Kenly?”
“Of course it is!”
“In what way?” urged Willard hopefully.
“Well,” began the other reflectively, holding his pajama jacket together with one hand and rubbing a touseled head with the other. “Well – ”
“Better class of fellows?” suggested Willard.
“N-no, they’re about the same. Some pretty decent chaps go to Kenly. It isn’t that. It – it – well, Alton’s just better, if you see what I mean!”
“I’m afraid I don’t,” laughed Willard.
Martin grinned. “You will when you’ve been here awhile,” he said encouragingly. “The switch is at the left of the door when you’re ready.”
“All right. I say, though, I’ve changed my mind about the beds. I’d rather have the other.”
“Honest? Well – ” Martin hesitated. “You’d better stick to the one you picked out, old man. That one’s got curvature of the spine. The spring lets you down in the middle.”
“I don’t mind,” laughed Willard. “I only chose the other because I saw it was yours.”
“Oh, that was it! Well, say, if you make a kick at the Office they’ll put a new spring on for you. Logan was always threatening to do it, but he never did. He was in here with me last year.”
Willard turned the switch and felt his way to the bed. “I don’t call this very bad,” he declared when he had experimented. “Anyway, it won’t keep me awake tonight!”
“That’s good. I hope it won’t. Good night – Brand!”
“Good night, Mart!”
CHAPTER VI
FIRST DAYS AT ALTON
Willard’s trunk arrived two days later, as though, by its delay, protesting against the change of plan, and by that time its owner was going about in one of Martin’s shirts. Those two days witnessed the shaking down of Willard into the manners and customs of Alton Academy. It wasn’t hard, for Martin was there to serve as a very willing counselor and guide. Willard became a member of the Junior Class on the strength of his high school certificate, and, since that was also Martin’s class, the latter was able to render assistance during the first difficult days. Fortunately the two boys took to each other at once and life in Number 16 Haylow promised to move pleasantly.
The term began on Thursday, and on Friday the football candidates gathered for the first practice. Alton Academy’s registration was well over four hundred, as the catalogue later announced, and of that number nearly one-fourth reported on the gridiron as candidates for the school team. Willard, viewing the throng, thought little of his chances of securing a place.
Coach Cade made much the same sort of a speech as coaches generally make on such occasions, and promised a successful season in return for cheerful obedience and hard work; and looked unutterably relieved