“Sure thing. Take the newspaper stories. They’ve been saying you had a bad knee, a lame shoulder, and all that sort of guff. Those yarns have come from Buck Badger and Chickering’s set.”
“But he has been keeping pretty quiet of late.”
“He’s been waiting. How he’ll rejoice now when he knows you have been thrown over! Oh, say, it makes me so thundering mad that I can’t keep still!”
Bink was rather comical in his rage. It seemed that he must be ludicrous, no matter what he did.
“I feel just like thrashing the ground with Buck Badger!” he declared.
The idea of little Stubbs “thrashing the ground” with the burly Westerner made Frank laugh outright.
“Oh, laugh!” shouted Bink, drawing the attention of the passengers on the car. “I don’t know what you are made of if you will laugh now!”
“Well, I’m not going to cry. I have done my duty for Old Eli, and my conscience is clear.”
They left the car on arriving at the college. A group of students hailed Frank as he appeared on the campus. It was cold weather, and the college men were warmly dressed, so they did not mind gathering in the open air to “talk it over.” In the group Frank saw the same men who had boarded the car ahead of him.
“Come here, Merriwell!” cried Puss Parker. “Is it true?”
“That Lorrimer has dropped you from the eleven.”
“He ought to be shot!” roared Roger Stone.
“If Harvard beats us without Merriwell being given a chance on the team, Lorrimer ought to have a coat of tar and feathers!” declared Phil Porter.
“Look here, old man,” said Parker to Frank, “we stick by you, and we’ve got to do what we can to see you back onto the team. Here is my hand.”
He grasped Frank’s hand and shook it. The others crowded about and shook hands with Merry, also. Every man of them expressed his confidence in Frank and admiration for him. It stirred Merriwell and touched his heart.
“Boys,” he said, with genuine feeling, “it’s worth being kicked off the eleven just to find out how stanch my real friends are!”
Rattleton and Diamond came up and joined the crowd. They had heard of Frank being dropped from the team, but neither of them would take any stock in it till they heard it from Merry’s lips. Rattleton was wildly excited.
“Who’s been telling this lundering barn about you?” he cried. “No, I mean who has been telling this blundering yarn? Of course, it is a wretched lie! They say Lorrimer has laid you off.”