“This is the time when I wish we were at Fairview,” remarked Tom, as he gingerly handled a needle, repairing a tear in his shirt.
“So I could ask some of the girls to fix these rips. I never can get used to a thimble.”
“Same here,” agreed Phil. “I shove it through with a nail file.”
“Threading a needle gets my goat,” confessed Sid. “Some authorities say to hold the thread still, and shove the needle at it. Other text books claim that the only proper way is to stick the needle upright in your knee and, after shutting your eyes, keep poking the thread at it until you make a hit. Then knot it and proceed as directed.”
“I never can get the right kind of a point on the thread,” admitted Frank. “It’s always too long, and then it curls up, and shoots around the needle like a drop curve, or else it’s too short, and blunt, and breaks the eye out of the needle.”
“There’s some kind of a thimble, that you stick your needle in, and it has a funnel so you can sort of drop your thread through it, and get it in the hole sooner or later,” remarked Tom. “Guess I’ll get one.”
“I had one of ’em,” said Sid. “The trouble is that after you get the needle in the thimble you can’t get it out again, and you have to break it off. Then you have to hunt up a new needle.”
“It’s a wonder some fellow doesn’t invent a kind of court plaster that you could stick over a tear, and mend it that way, as we do a cut,” suggested Phil. “I think I’ll work on that, instead of my perpetual motion machine after the games.”
Thus the jolly talk went on, until the lads, being excused from chapel for that day, had gotten their athletic suits into some sort of shape, and had gone out on the field for a final practice.
“Well, I trust the eleven will give a good account of itself to-day,” mildly remarked Dr. Churchill, as he met Holly and Kindlings with a squad of candidates. The doctor knew rather less about athletics than some girls do of baseball.
“It isn’t football, to-day, Doctor,” said Holly gently.
“Oh, of course. I ought to know that. Football comes in the Fall. The nine plays for the championship to-day, does it not? Ah, yes, I hope you win both halves.”
“It’s the track team that’s going to compete--for the all-around championship,” whispered Dr. Marshall, with a wink at the young trainers. “The track team, Dr. Churchill.”