ed Sydney, shame-faced. "Because I wanted to
know you, and I thought if you found me there with my machine busted
you'd try to fix it; and I'd make your acquaintance. It--it was awfully
dishonest, I know," muttered Sydney at the last.

Neil stared for a moment in surprise. Then he clapped the other on the
shoulder and laughed uproariously.

"Oh, to think of guileless little Syd being so foxy!" he cried. "I
wouldn't have believed it if any one else had told me, Syd."

"Well," said Sydney, very red in the face, but joining in the laughter,
"you don't mind?"

"Mind?" echoed Neil, becoming serious again, "why of course I don't.
What is there to mind, Syd? I'm glad you did it, awfully glad." He laid
his arm over the shoulders of the lad on the seat. "Here, let me push a
while. Queer you should have cared that much about knowing me; but--but
I'm glad." Suddenly his laughter returned.

"No wonder that old fossil in the village thought it was a queer sort of
a break," he shouted. "He knew what he was talking about after all when
he suggested cold-chisels, didn't he?"

CHAPTER XVIII

NEIL IS TAKEN OUT

The Tuesday before the final contest dawned raw and wet. The elms in the
yard _drip-dripped_ from every leafless twig and a fine mist covered
everything with tiny beads of moisture. The road to the field, trampled
by many feet, was soft and slippery. Sydney, almost hidden beneath
rain-coat and oil-skin hat, found traveling hard work. Ahead of him
marched five hundred students, marshaled by classes, a little army of
bobbing heads and flapping mackintoshes, alternately cheering and
singing. Dana, the senior-class president, strode at the head of the
line and issued his commands through a big purple megaphone.

Erskine was marching out to the field to cheer the eleven and to
practise the songs that were to be chanted defiantly at the game. Sydney
had started with his class, but had soon been left behind, the rubber
tires of the machine slipping badly in the mud. Presently the head of
the procession, but dimly visible to him through the mist, turned in at
the gate, the monster flag of royal purple, with its big white E,
drooping wet and forlorn on its staff. They were cheering again now, and
Sydney whispered an accompaniment behind the collar of his coat:

"Erskine! Erskine! Erskine! Rah-rah-rah, rah-rah-rah, rah-rah-rah!
Erskine! Erskine! Erskine!"

Suddenly footsteps sounded behind him and the tricycle went forward