THE HOMEWARD JOURNEY.
"What's the matter with Merriwell?" asked Lewis Little, speaking to a
group of jolly lads who were on the train that bore the Yale football
team out of Boston on its way to New Haven. "He's grouchy."
"Is he?" cried Paul Pierson. "Well, he ought to be ashamed of himself!
Why, he's the hero of the day! All the papers will have his picture
to-morrow. I saw at least five persons snapping him with cameras on the
field. Grouchy, is he? Well, confound him! He has no right to get a
grouch on."
"Not a bit of it!" cried Charlie Creighton. "What's the matter with him?
Where is he?"
"He's sitting back in the end of the car, looking fierce enough to eat
anybody."
Creighton, Pierson and several others sprang to their feet and looked
for Frank. They saw him.
He was staring out of the window in a blank manner, although he did not
seem to notice anything the train passed. He was paying no attention to
the gang of shouting, singing, laughing students, who filled the smoker
and were perched on the backs of the seats and crowded into the aisles.
"Hey, Merry!" shouted Creighton. "Shake it, old man--shake it! Come up
here! Get into the game!"
Frank looked around, shook his head, and then looked out of the window
again.
"Well, hang him!" growled Charlie. "Any one would think he had played
with Harvard, instead of winning the game for Yale! What can be the
matter with him?"
No one seemed to know. Creighton went down and talked to Frank, but
could get no satisfaction out of him.
As soon as he was let alone again, Merriwell fell to gazing out of the
window, seeming quite unaware of the shouts and songs of the jolly lads
in the car.
When strangers crowded into the car to get a look at the man who had won
the game for Yale, having heard he was on the train, he still continued
to gaze out of the window, and it was not apparent that he heard any of
their remarks.
"Tell you what," said Creighton, as he returned to Pierson and the
others of the little group, "Merriwell is sore."
"Sore?" cried Tom Thornton, "he can't be any sorer than I am! Why, I was
jumped on, kicked, rammed into the earth, and annihilated more than
twenty times during that game. A little more of it would have made a
regular jellyfish out of me. I'll be sore for a month, but I believe in
being jolly at the same time."
Then he broke forth into a song of victory, in which every one in that
car seemed to join, judging by the manner in which the chorus was roared
forth.
"Boom-to-de-ay, boom-ta-de-ay,
Boom-to, de-boom-ta, de-boom-ta-de-ay;
We won to-day, we won to-day,
We won, oh, we won, oh, we won to-day."
Any one who has not heard a great crowd of college lads singing this
chorus cannot conceive the volume of sound it seems to produce. When
they all "bear down together" on the "boom-ta," the explosive sound is
like a staggering blow from the shoulder.
But even this song of victory did not seem to arouse Frank in the least.
He remained silent and grim, being so much unlike his usual self that
all who knew him were filled with astonishment.
"I did not mean that he was sore of body," said Creighton. "I think he
is chewing an old rag."
"What do you mean by that?"
"Well, you know, we all gave him the marble heart when we thought he had
decided not to play football because he was afraid for certain reasons.
I think he is sore over that, and I don't know that I blame him. I
swear, fellows, we did use him shabby!"
"That's it," nodded Pierson; "that's just it. And he is proud and
sensitive. He would not show he cared a continental before the game,
but, now he was the means of saving the day for Yale, I fancy he is
chewing over it a little."
"Never thought of that," said Bink Stubbs. "Bet you're right, fellows.
We'll have to get down on our hulks to him to make it all right. I'm
ready to say I'm ashamed of myself, and ask him to forget it."
The others expressed themselves as equally willing, and so it came about
that Frank was much surprised to have them come to him, one after
another, and confess they had used him shabbily. He was ready enough to
shake hands with them all, while he assured them he did not hold the
least hardness.
They saw he was in earnest, they were satisfied he was willing and ready
to forget they had ever treated him with contempt, and yet he did not
cheer up, which was something they could not understand.
"Better let him alone," advised Creighton, after a little. "It may be
something we don't know anything about, that he is chewing. Anyway, he's
not himself."
Bruce Browning, big and lazy ever, was one of the group. He had been
keeping still, but now he observed:
"That's right, let him alone. I've traveled with him, and I never saw
him this way before. I tell you he is dangerous, and somebody may get
hurt."
"Keep away from the window, my love and my dove--
Keep away from the window, don't you hear!
Come round some other night,
For there's gwine to be a fight,
And there'll be razzers a-flyn' through the air."
Thus sang Bink Stubbs.
"Look at Harris!" laughed Thornton, nudging the fellow nearest him.
"Don't he look sour? They say he got hit to-day."
"Got hit?"
"Yes."
"What with?"
"A roll."
"A roll of what?"
"Bank notes."
"You mean he has been betting?"
"Sure."
"But you don't mean he bet on Harvard?"
"I understand he put his last cent on Harvard, and went broke. He was
fortunate enough to have a return ticket to New Haven, so he didn't have
to borrow money to get back on."
Harris was sitting in a seat, looking sulky and disgusted, fiercely
trying to chew the end of his short black mustache. His hat was pulled
over his eyes, and he did not seem to take much interest in what was
going on in the car.
Stubbs and Creighton got a crowd together to jolly Harris, and they
descended on him in a body.
"Hello, old man!" cried Charlie, gayly. "Is it straight that you won
three hundred on Yale to-day?"
"I heard it was five hundred," chirped Bink Stubbs, "What a pull to
make! Congratulations, old man!"
"You'll have to ball the crowd when we get to New Haven, Sport," said
Lewis Little. "You can afford to open fizz."
Harris smiled in a sickly way, and tried to say something, but Paul
Pierson got him by the hand and gave him a shaking up that literally
took away his breath.
"Good boy!" cried Paul. "I'm glad you stuck by old Eli! But did you have
the nerve to bet every cent you had that Yale would take that game? My,
my! You are a nervy fellow, Sport, old chap. You were the only man who
had all that confidence."
"Sport never goes back on old Yale," laughed Little. "He knew the chance
of Yale's winning looked slim, but still he backed her up. That's what
makes him look so cheerful now."
"You would have felt bad if you had bet your money on Harvard, now
wouldn't you?" cried Thornton.
"Oh, yes, I certainly should," gasped Harris, who was suffering
tortures.
"What a jolly time we'll have drinking fizz on you, old man!" exclaimed
Bink Stubbs. "I feel as if I might get away with about four quarts."
"Oh, we'll make a hole in your winnings!" laughed Pierson. "I am so dry
this minute that my neck squeaks."
"So are we all!" shouted the others.
Harris could not repress a groan. He wondered if they were fooling with
him, but they seemed so much in earnest that he could not tell. Perhaps
they really thought he had won a big roll on Yale. He couldn't tell them
he had bet on Harvard. What could he do?
He was forced to pretend that he was delighted, but over and over he
promised himself that he would give them the slip, even if he had to
leap from the train while it was running at full speed. Pay for fizz!
Why, he didn't have enough left to pay for a glass of plain beer!