Rivals for the Team: A Story of School Life and Football

“I’d hate to live up here in summer, Bert,” said Ted Trafford, carefully easing his five feet and ten inches of tired, aching body to the window-seat and turning a perspiring face to the faint breeze that entered. “It must be hotter than Tophet.”

“Well, it’s up high enough to get the air, isn’t it?”

“Oh, it’s high enough, all right! If I had to climb those three flights of stairs a dozen times a day――――”

“Wonder why slate stairs seem harder than others,” said Nick Blake, fanning himself with a magazine.

“Because they are harder, naturally.” Ted looked about the study. “It isn’t so bad, though, when you get here. And I dare say it’ll be fine in winter. You haven’t an open fireplace, though.”

“I had one last year in 19. It was only a bother. If I had a fire the ashes got all over the shop. Besides, it was always so warm in the room that when I wanted one I had to keep all the windows open. There’s dandy steam heat in Lothrop.”

“There is in Trow, but――――”

“Oh, get out, Ted!” interrupted Nick. “I’ve been in your study when the thermometer wasn’t over fifty! Everyone knows that Trow’s a regular barn in cold weather.”

“Well, some days, when the wind’s a certain way――――”

“Trow’s older than this, isn’t it?” asked Bert Winslow. He had yielded the window-seat to his visitors and was stretched out on the leather cushions of a Morris chair, the back of which he had lowered to the last notch. It was very warm in Number 29, for the study was on the top floor of the building and overhead the September sun had been shining all day on the slate roof. Then, too, since the Fall Term did not begin for two days yet, all but a few of the rooms were closed and what little breeze there was found scant circulation. Bert had opened the door and windows of 32, across the corridor, and that helped to some extent, but Lothrop Hall seemed to have caught all the heat of the past summer and to be bent on hoarding it on the top floor.

“Why, yes,” Ted was replying. “Trow was the first of the new buildings. It’s been built about twelve years, I think. I dare say the heating is better here and in Manning. Still, I never have any trouble keeping warm. You chaps over here are a pampered lot, anyway, with your common room and your library and your recreation room and――and your shower baths and all the rest of it! Sybarites, that’s what you are!”

“Don’t judge us all, Ted, by this palatial suite,” begged Nick. “Some of us live in monastic simplicity, in one bare little room.”

“I’ve seen your bare little room,” replied Ted, smiling. “You’re a lot of mollycoddles, the bunch of you. What time is it?”

Nick, stretched at the other end of the seat, his cheek on the windowsill and his gaze fixed on the shadowed stretches of the campus below, moved his hand toward his fob only to let it fall idly again.

“Look yourself, you lazy beggar,” he murmured.

“Seventeen to five,” said Bert, dropping his watch back with a sigh. Ted digested the information in silence for several minutes. Nick continued his somnolent regard of the campus and Bert thoughtfully tapped together the toes of his rubber-soled shoes.

“More than an hour to supper,” said Ted finally. “Not that I’m particularly hungry, though. It’s too hot to eat. Honest, fellows, I believe it’s hotter up here than it is in New York! If this last week is a sample of New England summer weather I don’t see why folks come here the way they do.”

“It’s the fine, pure air,” muttered Nick.

“Air! That’s the trouble. There isn’t any. This place is hotter than Broadway on the Fourth of July!”

“There’s a breeze now,” said Nick. “Get it?”

“Sure; it almost blew out the door,” replied Ted sarcastically. “Come on over to my place. It’s a heap cooler, I’ll bet.”

“I’m too tired to move,” protested his host. “We can go downstairs, if you like. I dare say it’s cooler in the common room.”

“Who’s with you this year?” asked Ted, his gaze traveling to the open door of the bedroom at the left.

“Fellow by the name of Ordway, or something. Comes from Maryland. Upper middler, I think.”

“How’d you happen to go in with him? Thought you liked rooming alone.”

“So I do, but I’ve had my eye on this suite ever since I came over from Manning. Gus Livingstone and I had it all fixed to take it together and applied last fall for it. Then, when Gus didn’t come back after winter vacation, I tried to get Nick to come in with me, and――――”

“I wanted to hard enough,” said Nick, without turning, “but my dad kicked like a steer. He said seven hundred was too much for his pocket.”

“Wow!” exclaimed Ted. “Is that what this stands you? Seven hundred each?”

Bert nodded. “Yes, it’s high in price and elevation too.”

“What do you pay downstairs, Nick?”

“Three hundred. That’s what you pay, isn’t it?”

“Two-fifty. Seven hundred for room and board, a hundred and fifty for tuition and a couple of hundred for incidentals; total, ten hundred and fifty a year! Say, Bert, I’ll bet your old man will be mighty glad when you’re through here!”

“Then it’ll be college,” answered Bert, “and I guess that won’t be much cheaper. We do cost our folks a lot of money, though, don’t we?”

“We’re worth it, though,” said Nick. “At least, some of us are.”

Ted Trafford laughed. “I’m worth two-fifty and you’re worth three, eh? And Bert’s worth seven. Well, it’s a peach of a suite, all right, Bert, but I’d just as lief have my dive. Besides, I’ve got it to myself. When you have another chap with you he always wants to cut up when you want to plug. Not for mine, thanks!”

“Single blessedness for me, too,” murmured Nick. “When I was in Manning in junior year I roomed with young Fessenden and we nearly got fired because we were always scrapping. He was a quarrelsome little brute!”

“What happened to him? Did you kill him finally?”

“No, but I wanted to lots of times. He quit the next year. Went to some school in Pennsylvania. His folks wanted him nearer home, he said. I don’t see why they should!”

“Hope you like your new chum, Bert,” said Ted. “Broadway’s a funny name, though, eh?”

“Ordway,” Bert corrected. “I dare say we’ll get along. I have a nice disposition.”