Talbot, the captain of the crew, would probably have disputed this loud assumption if he had been given an opportunity to speak; but others were readier of tongue.
“And the track’s out!” cried Seamans. He held a sandwich untasted within three inches of his lips and stared over the railing into Rolfe’s face with an expression of disgust.
“Bad for you, Sim,” called out Jack Sumner. “You’ll have to go in for baseball.—Some soup, please.”
“Newbury lost all her track men last year, that’s why the track’s out.” Talbot had found his tongue.
“That’s not the reason,” proclaimed Sumner. “Mr. Westcott doesn’t believe in track work for schoolboys. He thinks it’s too much of a strain for young fellows like us. Your brother Bob has the same idea. He told me just the other day that it usually spoiled fellows for college running.”
“Smithy would have put it in all the same, if Newbury had any show for it.”
“I don’t quite understand about those conditions,” came from the lips of a boy at the railing, who was poising a buttered bread stick before a broad, big-featured face crowned with shaggy hair.
“You never understand anything, Fluffy,” cut in Wilmot. “A fellow who asks ‘why’ about the laws of falling bodies—”
He hesitated, giving Fluffy a chance to ejaculate, “You don’t know yourself—”
“And don’t care!” retorted Wilmot. “I know they fall, and there’s a rule about it.”
“I don’t mean falling bodies, I mean about the cup!” Fluffy got this out in the face of a storm that threatened to sweep him the whole length of the railing. No one wanted to hear a debate between Fluffy Dobbs and Wilmot on the laws of falling bodies.
“It’s clear enough,” said Sumner. “There are three sports that count, football, baseball, and crew. Whoever wins two of them gets the cup for a year. The school that gets it three times has it to keep.”
“Do you understand that, Fluffy?” called Wilmot. “Because if you don’t, we’ll get you a map and a guide-book.”
“But supposing each of the three schools wins at one sport?” proposed Fluffy, undisturbed by Wilmot’s jeers, to which he was evidently well accustomed.
“Are they going to have special crew races with Newbury and Trowbridge?” asked Tracy.
“Then the first thing for us to do is to win at football,” said Trask. “It’s up to you fellows to start the thing right.”