On the following Saturday afternoon House and Day met in the first game
of the series to settle the school hockey supremacy. The Day Team was
credited with being better than the House. Last winter it had won two
straight games without much trouble and borne off the pewter mug which
Mr. Crane and Mr. Folsom had donated as a trophy two years before. The
mug was to go finally to the team winning two out of three series, and
so far both Day Team and House Team had one win to its credit and the
present series would settle the ownership of the trophy.
There were three star performers on the Day Team: White, who played
center; Grimshaw, who played cover-point, and Morgan, who was the
goal-tend. Billy Spooner, the captain, was an excellent skater, but
was not a very certain performer with the stick. The rest of the Day
Team were only fair players. For the House, Ben Holden was the star
performer. Ben played center and was truly an adept with the hockey
stick. Dick Gardner, at goal, was another brilliant player, and Pierce,
rover, and Lovell, point, were capable of good work. Cupples, at right
wing, was rather weak, and the same may be said of Waters, on the other
end of the line, and of Perkins at cover-point.
On the whole, the day pupils had rather the better of it as regards
material, and if they failed to carry off the coveted trophy it would
be largely because of lack of practice. They had as much right to use
the school rinks as the house students, and Spooner tried his level
best to get his team to remain after school and practice. But it was
hard work. Every day one or more of the day pupils deserted for some
reason or other, leaving the team short. Sometimes Spooner conducted
practice with only four players out of seven!
It was right there that Ben and his House Team had the advantage. His
fellows didn’t have to run home after lessons were over and he almost
always had enough players at hand to make a full team. Crandall,
who was a poor skater but a hard worker, was usually on hand as a
substitute, while Lanny looked on enviously from the side of the rink
and almost daily petitioned Ben to let him play.
Mr. Folsom and Mr. Crane acted respectively as referee and timekeeper.
The audience consisted of a handful of boys from the village, several
of them day students, the four juniors and Nan. Kid, first indicating
Small and then himself, declared that the gathering was “small, but
select.” Lanny, dressed for play, but at the moment impersonating a
spectator, deftly introduced some particles of ice down Kid’s neck and
warned him against punning. During the subsequent confusion Mr. Folsom
tossed the puck onto the ice and blew his whistle and the game began.
“Which side do you want to win?” asked Nan of Bert.
“Our side, of course.”
“Yes, I suppose you do,” she sighed. “But I’m in a very difficult
position because, you see, both teams are made up of Mt. Pleasant boys,
and I ought to be――be strictly impartial.”
“I don’t see how you can be,” replied Bert, leaning over the boards to
watch Waters try a shot at goal. “Besides, I don’t see what difference
it makes.”
Waters made a miserable shot and the puck skimmed over the barrier and
into the snow, and Small dug it out with a spare hockey stick.
“It’s the principle of it, I think,” responded Nan. “In some ways I’d
like our side――I mean House to win, but it wouldn’t be quite fair to
the Day boys, would it?”
“Wouldn’t it?” Nan’s ethics was too deep for Bert, and he was glad
that Ben shot a neat goal at that moment so that he could abandon
the subject. “Fine, Ben!” he shouted. “That’s the stuff!” He clapped
Lanny on the back and was in turn pummelled by the enthusiastic Kid,
who yelled, “Hooray for the House! Kill them, Ben!” at the top of his
lungs. Nan maintained a discreet silence, her only evidence of emotion
being the raising and lowering of herself on her toes. As it was a very
cold afternoon, however, she may have done it only to keep her feet
warm.
After that the tide of battle turned deplorably and Day made three
goals, one right after another. Perkins was almost useless at
cover-point and Lovell was eluded without much difficulty. Gardner
made several good stops, but the Day Team hammered at him savagely
and thrice the puck got by him into the net. House scored again two
or three minutes later when Ben, capturing the disk in front of his
own goal, skated with it the length of the ice and passed to Pierce in
front of the enemy’s net. Pierce fooled Turner, point, and banged the
puck between Morgan’s feet. The half ended a minute or so after, the
score 3 to 2 in favor of the Day Team. It was still anybody’s game, and
Nan said she hoped it would end in a tie so that both sides would be
satisfied. Lanny hooted at that.
“Satisfied nothing! Gee, that would be as bad as being beaten! Besides,
it wouldn’t do any good; we’d have to play the game over again.”
“If it’s a tie,” said Kid, “they’ll play another period. They did last
winter, Stanley says.”
As it turned out, however, a third period was not necessary. Day
started the next half with a rush that for a moment almost swept House
off their feet. Two tallies were scored before House could settle down
and break up the attack. Waters had an unfortunate mix-up with White,
of the opposing side, and retired with a gashed lip. Crandall took his
place, much to Lanny’s disgust, and from thence on to the end the game
was extremely one-sided. The only time when Fortune smiled on the House
Team was when, after Morgan had stopped a shot from Pierce’s stick,
the puck was pushed into the net by Turner quite by accident. The disk
didn’t get far in before Morgan swept it out again, but Mr. Folsom blew
his whistle and declared it a goal, and the House supporters howled
their glee. Even Nan emitted a shrill cry of delight and blushed rosily
when Bert turned to laugh at her.
“I don’t care!” she said. “They’re so far behind that I’m glad they
scored.”
Kid jeered scathingly. “Oh, sloppy work! Scored against yourselves!
You’re a nice lot of hockey players, you are!” Kid danced up and down
in the snow and hurled insults until Lanny threatened to roll him in
the snow. But that lucky goal was the final tally for House, and when
the game came to an end Day’s victory was a decisive one, the score 7
to 3. Ben was disgusted and chagrined and when Kid, thinking to console
him, enumerated a few of the things they would do to the day pupils
in the next game Ben spanked him with the flat of his hockey stick
and told him to shut up and not get fresh. Kid, surprised and hurt,
consoled himself by shying a snowball at the retreating forms of the
Day Team players and, as he boasted later with much elation, scoring
against the back of White’s head.
The contest was discussed before the big fire in the hall before
supper, and Ben announced that beginning Monday there would be morning
as well as afternoon practice for the House Team. “We have almost an
hour between school and dinner,” he said, “and we might as well put
in the time practicing. Those fellows don’t get more than half the
practice that we do, and they played all around us to-day. So we’ve got
to take a brace, fellows. Lanny, I’m going to try you Monday. You think
you can play. Go ahead and show me.”
Lanny, tongue-tied by much joy, grinned. Kid, who was trying to roast
some chestnuts he had been treasuring since autumn, gurgled with
delight. “They won’t do a thing to Lanny, will they? He’s so small
they’ll just pick him up and――” He paused and fixed Lanny with a
rapturous gaze. “Say, Lanny, wouldn’t it be funny if they mistook you
for the puck?” he cried.
Lanny pounced on him and there was noise and confusion until the older
fellows parted them. Then everyone trooped into supper, deliciously
hungry, and fell upon the repast like a flight of devastating locusts.
Luckily defeat doesn’t spoil appetites.
In spite of Ben’s plans, there was no morning practice on Monday,
for a mantle of snow hid the ice and the time that was to have been
devoted to skating and stick work was spent with snow-shovels in
hand. There was practice in the afternoon, but that night it again
snowed and Ben viewed the rink the next day with deep disgust. The
only consoling thought was that the Day Team was no better off. Again
shovels were brought into play and by the time the ice was cleared
the barriers about the rinks were surrounded by deep banks of snow.
Bert learned to be an expert with the wooden shovel, for he, like the
rest of the under-class fellows, had to work hard those days. But it
was all in a good cause and he didn’t mind it a bit. The spirit of
mutiny was quite quelled now. The snow made the tobogganing better
and there were some rare times on the slide. Having won the right to
the use of the slide the juniors were no longer debarred from it, but
it must be acknowledged that they were somewhat restricted and often
had to wait a good while for a chance to go down. Kid alone, however,
voiced rebellion. It seemed as if, having once tasted the joys of
independence, he could not reconcile himself to slavery. But he found
no encouragement from the other members of the Junior Four and his
protests were wasted on the winter air.
“You just wait until I’m an upper middler,” he threatened. “Maybe I
won’t bully the juniors! Wow!”