CHAPTER II✦

THE WARDROBE TRUNK

As Jerry opened the door he was greeted with a joyous shout from Tom Hartley.

“A-a-ay, Jerry! You old renegade, where have you been?”

Tom, who was nearly a year Jerry’s junior, a fine-looking boy of sixteen, brown-haired and brown-eyed, swung himself from the window seat and seized his roommate’s hand.

“I couldn’t get here any sooner, Tom,” answered Jerry, his rather wide mouth curved in a smile of pleasure. “Pap ain’t been so well lately and I had to stay around. How you-all been, Tom?”

“I-all’s been fine,” laughed Tom. “Didn’t you get the letter I wrote just before I left home? I went down to New York Monday and stayed until Thursday morning.”

Jerry shook his head. “It takes a good while for the mail to get to Huckinsburg. Reckon your letter got there about this morning.”

“When did you leave?”

“Yesterday noon. I wrote Mr. Ledyard I couldn’t get here on time. Reckon he’s going to mind?”

“No. He told me Thursday he’d heard from you. I’d have met you if I’d known when you were coming. You didn’t say in your letter.”

“I didn’t know.” Jerry pulled his satchel toward him and opened it. “I wasn’t right sure I’d get here at all, Pap was so poorly.”

“That’s too bad,” murmured Tom politely. “What’s the trouble?”

“Sort of a general misery,” replied Jerry gravely. “Pap ain’t so young as he was. Reckon he’s pretty nigh seventy years old.” Jerry pulled a pair of worn and scuffed shoes from the bag and began to unlace the ones he had on. “Got me a new pair of shoes the other day,” he explained, with a grimace as he removed the right one, “and they ain’t broke in yet.”

“You got them too small, you chump,” said Tom. “Don’t you know you can’t put that hoof of yours into a pointed-toe shoe? Where’s your common sense?”

“That’s what I told the feller that sold them to me, but he said he didn’t have no wider ones. They’re right good-looking, ain’t they?”

“Jerry, they’re absolutely fierce,” responded Tom severely, “and you know it!”

Jerry chuckled. “Shucks, Tom, I’m right sorry! I thought sure you’d like these shoes. Thought maybe you’d be asking me to get you a pair just like ’em.”

“I will when I join the negro minstrels! Where’d you get them?”

“Home.”

“In Huckinsburg? You mean you sold them to yourself?”

“Yes, and I had hard work doing it, too!”

“I’ll bet you did!” laughed Tom. “How much did you charge yourself for them?”

“Six dollars and eighty-five cents. That’s just what they cost.”

“Well, the price is the best thing about them. You’ll have to remember that when they hurt you.”

“Yes, I’ve been remembering it all day,” replied Jerry sadly. “It don’t help like you’d think it would! Reckon I’d better go over to Hall and tell ’em I’m here. And I’ve got to see about having my trunk fetched up, too.”

“Hello, got a trunk, have you? Traveling in style, eh? You’re getting to be a regular swell, Jerry.”

Jerry grinned broadly. “Had so many things I couldn’t get them in a valise. Bought me one of those wardrobe trunks.”

“What?”

Jerry nodded gravely. “Yep, there’s some class to me nowadays, Tom.”

“A wardrobe trunk!” marveled Tom. “Jerry, you certainly are coming on! Got your claw hammer with you? Or just a dinner coat?”

“Nary one. I was thinking about a claw hammer, but when the feller looked me over he said a tack hammer would come nearer fitting! So I didn’t get one. How’s every one, Tom?”

“All right, I guess. I’m kind of missing some of the old faces. Lory Browne’s gone, and Wayne Sortwell, of course, and Pop Lord. It’s going to be funny without Pop. He was a corking chap, Jerry. And he was certainly a dandy baseball captain. We’ll miss him.”

“Reckon the new captain’s just as good, Tom.”

“The new captain knows better, but he’s certainly going to try to make good, Jerry. Fall practice starts Wednesday, by the way.”

“Mean you-all play baseball now?” exclaimed the other in surprise.

“Of course! We practice right into November. We don’t have any outside games, but we do a lot of hard work. It’s mostly for the new fellows. Fall work gets them broken in for spring. How’s your batting eye, Jerry?”

“I don’t know.” Jerry shook his head. “I ain’t――haven’t had a bat in my hand since that Cumbridge game.”

“Not since you knocked out the homer that won the old ball game, eh? Thought you played in Huckinsburg.”

“Some of ’em did, but I was right busy at the store this summer. Reckon Joe Kirkham’s back.”

“Sure! Joke’s out with the football crowd. So’s Tub Keller. And Andy Jackson and two or three more. That makes it bad, because I need them for the nine. Well, it can’t be helped. You’ll have to give me a hand with some of the new chaps.”

“Learn ’em, you mean?”

“Well, teach them,” answered Tom, with a smile.

Jerry frowned. “Reckon my grammar’s sort of backslid since I’ve been home,” he said. “But, golly, Tom, I couldn’t teach nobody noth――anybody anything!”

“Oh, yes, you can, son. Anyway, you’ve got to try. I can’t do it all.”

“Won’t Mr. Keegan be around?”

“No, the coach doesn’t show up in the fall, Jerry. Not the baseball coach. Thorne’ll be here in a day or two, though.”

“Who’s he?” asked the other.

“Football coach. Didn’t you ever hear of Wesley Thorne?” Jerry shook his head a trifle apologetically. “‘Watch Me’ Thorne they used to call him. He was an All-Southern tackle for two years. Played with University of Virginia. He was a crackajack player, but he doesn’t get on here very well. He has a three-year contract with us and this is his last. I don’t believe he will be back.”

“Don’t they like him?” asked Jerry.

“Not much. He isn’t what you’d call popular. Guess he’s too strict. With due apologies to you, Jerry, you Southerners are rather hard to manage. Seems as if you just couldn’t stand authority. Thorne is always treading on some fellow’s toes. I don’t mean that he’s disliked; a lot of the fellows like him; I do, myself, although I don’t know him very well; but the football crowd hang away from him, and that won’t do if you expect to win. He managed to turn out a mighty good team the year before last that licked Cumbridge to a fare-ye-well, but last Fall every one pulled in different directions and we got licked for keeps. I hope things will work better this year.”

“What for do they call him ‘Watch Me’?” asked Jerry.

“They say that was a favorite expression of his when he was playing. ‘Watch me,’ he’d tell the fellow he was playing against, ‘Watch me! Watch me!’ And the other chap would get so busy watching him that he couldn’t see him for looking! And ‘Watch Me’ would pile through him nine times out of ten! That’s what I’ve heard. He knows a lot of football and I guess he could turn out a good team if the fellows would let him. But take a fellow like Mansfield, Jerry. You know him, don’t you?”

“To speak to.”

“Well, he’s not a bad sort, and he’s a corking player, and he’s pretty well liked, but he ought never to be football captain. All you’ve got to do to get Hal Mansfield down on you is contradict him. He thinks he knows it all and can’t stand any one telling him a thing. Of course there’ll be trouble the minute Thorne tries to run the team the way he wants it run. Well, it’s not my funeral. Look here, are you going over to Hall or are you going to sit there nursing your foot the rest of the day?”

“I’m aiming to go over,” replied Jerry mildly. “I was just pondering.”

“What were you pondering, you idiot?”

“Whether I could play football. Reckon I could, Tom?”

“You? No, I don’t. Now look here, son, don’t get that bee in your bonnet. You aren’t cut out for football. Besides, there’s no sense in spoiling a good baseball man to make a punk football player. Also――and mind this, Jerry――I need you a heap more than Mansfield does! Come on, and I’ll walk over with you.”

Crossing the yard, Tom reverted to the subject. “What put football in that crazy bean of yours anyway?” he demanded.

“Well, I seen――saw them playing it when I came along,” answered Jerry, “and it looked so plumb foolish I got a hankering to try it!”

“Yes,” responded Tom scathingly, “you would if it was anything foolish! You keep away from that football field, son, or I’ll tan your hide! Hear me?”

“Yeah, but maybe I’d make a right smart football feller,” said Jerry, shaking his head doubtfully. “You can’t tell.”

“Can’t you? I can!” Tom propelled him rudely up the steps of Founders’ Hall. “The only football job you’d ever get would be understudying the dummy!”

Ten minutes later, returning from a perfectly satisfactory interview with the school secretary, Tom announced: “You’re at our table, Jerry. I got them to keep a place for you. We’ve got a dandy crowd: Joke and Tub Keller and Billy Conger and Pete Norris――――”

“How’s any one else going to get anything to eat if Norris is there?” asked Jerry.

“Oh, ‘Fat’ is on the eleven this fall and is dieting,” laughed Tom. “Doesn’t eat anything at all――for him!”

Jerry held quite a reception in the corridor of the Hall later. He and Tom arrived several minutes before the dining room doors were opened and about every second fellow to enter claimed a handshake. Jerry was palpably surprised at the number of his acquaintances, and, perhaps, noting the seemingly genuine pleasure shown at his return, he recalled his first appearance at North Bank eight months before. Then half-concealed amusement had greeted him, and “Tarheel” and “Towhead” had followed his progress around the yard. Supper was a very merry meal this evening, and afterwards Joe Kirkham accompanied the chums back to Baldwin. Tom led the way into the darkness of Number 7 and instantly there came from him an exclamation of anguish as he banged his shins against some unlooked for obstacle just inside the door.