“Yes, I remember,” answered Neil, smiling. “We had rather a good time, didn’t we, at Seabright? It was awfully nice of you to ask me down there, Paul; and your folks were mighty good to me. Next summer I want you to come up to New Hampshire and see us for a while. Of course, we can’t give you sea bathing, and you won’t look like a red Indian when you go home, but we could have a good time just the same.”
“Red Indian yourself!” cried Paul. “You’re nearly twice as tanned as I am. I don’t see how you did it. I was there pretty near all summer and you stayed just three weeks; and look at us! I’m as white as a sheet of paper—”
“Yes, brown paper,” interpolated Neil.
“And you have a complexion like a—a football after a hard game.”
Neil grinned, then—
“By the way,” he said, “did I tell you I’d heard from Crozier?”
“About Billy and the ducks? And Gordon’s not going back to Hillton? Yes, you got that at the beach; remember?”
“So I did. ‘Old Cro’ will be up to his ears in trouble pretty soon, won’t he? I’m glad they made him captain, awfully glad. I think he can turn out a team that’ll rub it into St. Eustace again just as you did last year.”
“Yes; and Gardiner’s going to coach again.” Paul smiled reminiscently. Then, “By Jove, it does seem funny not to be going back to old Hillton, doesn’t it? I suppose after a while a fellow’ll get to feeling at home here, but just at present—” He sighed and shook his head.
“Wait until college opens to-morrow and we get to work; we won’t have much time to feel much of anything, I guess. Practise is called for four o’clock. I wonder—I wonder if we’ll make the team?”
“Why not?” objected Paul. “If I thought I wouldn’t I think I’d pitch it all up and—and go to Robinson!” He grinned across at his chum.
“You stay here and you’ll get a chance to go at Robinson; that’s a heap more satisfactory.”
“Well, I’m going to make the varsity, Neil. I’ve set my heart on that, and what I make up my mind to do I sometimes most always generally do. I’m not troubling, my boy; I’ll show them a few tricks about playing half-back that’ll open their eyes. You wait and see!”
Neil looked as though he was not quite certain as to that, but said nothing, and Paul went on:
“I wonder what sort of a fellow this Devoe is?”
“Well, I’ve never seen him, but we know that he’s about as good an end as there is in college to-day; and I guess he’s bound to be the right sort or they wouldn’t have made him captain.”
“He’s a senior, isn’t he?”
“Yes; he’s played only two years, and they say he’s going into the Yale Law School next year. If he does, of course he’ll get on the team there. Well, I hope he’ll take pity on two ambitious but unprotected freshmen and—”
There was a knock at the study door and Paul jumped forward and threw it open. A tall youth of twenty-one or twenty-two years of age stood in the doorway.