CHAPTER XV

GETTING INTO STEP

The routine of the school did not really begin, as Dr. Raymond had said, until Monday morning. Yet by that time Bobby Blake and Fred Martin felt as though they were really old members of the Rockledge Fifty.

They had learned many of the stock stories of school--legends of great fights with the boys of Belden School, or of mighty games at football or baseball or some other sport, in which victory had perched upon the banners of Rockledge.

The loyalty of boarding school boys is second only to family feeling or patriotic love for one's country. Bobby and Fred and the other boys of Dormitory Two were just at that age when the mind and heart are both most impressionable.

The new boys learned the school yell, or cheer, which they had first heard given in eulogy of Dr. Raymond. They thought it the finest yell they had ever heard.

They were told about the Sword and Star, too. It was indeed an honor to wear the little blue and white button. One had to be at least one year at Rockledge, to stand at a certain mark in recitations, and to have a pretty clean record in deportment, to gain entrance into the Order of the Sword and Star.

It was true that such chaps as Pee Wee, and the Mouser, as well as Shiner and Howell Purdy, were rather skeptical about the value of membership in the school secret society. Dr. Raymond was a member and that "looked bad" to those boys who were out for fun. And "f-u-n" spelled--in their minds--"mischief," and vice versa!

Those first few weeks of the new school year, however, passed without any very wild outbreak upon the part of either the merely mischievous, like Pee Wee and his mates, or by the really disturbing element (which was small) headed by Billy Bronson and Jack Jinks.

Those two worthies had, after a time, joined forces again; but they were not as good friends and co-workers as they had been before the poguey fight.

Bobby and Fred really gave most of their attention to studies. The school at Clinton had been graded so differently from this preparatory institution, that the chums had to work hard to pick up in some studies, while they were well advanced beyond their mates in others.

Fred was inspired by Bobby's example to win good marks for himself. Even the stern master, Mr. Leith, who looked over the work of the smaller boys fortnightly, commented favorably upon what the chums had accomplished.

In play hours the Lower School kept together for the most part. Here was where Fred Martin's plans were proven smart. The baseball outfit that he and Bobby had purchased with their peep-show money was welcomed with great approval by the boys of Number Two Dormitory.

Bobby and Fred won their places on the Second Nine at once. They played the First Dormitory Nine on Saturday of the first week of school, and won. Bobby's "fade-away," as Fred had prophesied, puzzled the other nine's battery splendidly.

The next Saturday the victorious nine played against a team of town boys and again won. Captain Gray then began to take notice of the victorious nine. He coached them a little and then they challenged a nine belonging to the Belden School across the lake.

It was after the first of October when this match occurred, and the Rockledge boys went across in their own boats. Although visiting a hostile camp, the boys of Rockledge were very nicely received by the older Belden boys. Naturally, the home team had the crowd with them, but Bobby held the enemy down to ten hits and only six runs, and the Rockledge nine won by two runs.

Although their hosts remained polite to the visitors, Bobby and Fred saw very plainly that the rivalry between the two schools was deep-seated. They heard Captain Gray and Max Bender talking to some of the big fellows of Belden, and both sides were boasting of what the rival football teams would do to each other on Thanksgiving Day.

On that day the Belden crowd would come over to Rockledge, and from this time on, there was little more baseball played by the Rockledge boys. They were deeply interested in football.

In this game Bobby and Fred did not shine so brightly, but they went into hard training with the second junior team and under Captain Gray, who coached the smaller boys as well as the first team, learned a whole lot about football.

Meanwhile, not a word had come to Bobby from his parents after they had sailed from New York. He heard from Clinton every week, for Michael Mulcahey painfully indited a scrawly letter to him, enclosing sometimes a note from Meena. Michael, having crossed from Ireland in a sailing ship years before, was considered by Bobby a marvel of sea-lore. One time he wrote:

"DERE BOBBY:--

"It ain't nawthin alarmin that we don't here yet from Mistur Blake an his good lady an so I tell Meena whos got the face ache most of the time now and is just as good compny as a mad cat. She's rayfused to marry me agin, an I do be thinkin thats struck in an worries her face a lot. Howsomever 'tis about your feyther and mother Id write to cheer you up a bit. I well remember the long passage we made from the Ould Sod when I kem to this counthry. Twas head winds we had, an its like head winds that has held the big ship back thats takin Mistur Blake an his good lady to these Brazils. An tis a mortal far ways they do be goin. Mistur Martin says the offices in New York hav had no wareless telegraf despatches (what iver they be) from the ship since she was off Hattie Ross--an whoever she is I dunnaw. But if she's like most females, she's cranky, an that accounts for the delay.

"Be good an ye'll be happy, aven if ye don't have so much fun, from your friend and well wisher, rayspectfully,

"MICHAEL MULCAHEY."

This letter--and similar epistles--cheered Bobby some, and Mr. Martin wrote him a jolly little note, enclosed in a longer letter to Fred. But Bobby could not help feeling worried about the silence of his parents, especially at night.

When he knelt to say his prayers (and most of the other boys in Dormitory Two did likewise), he remembered what his mother had said about her praying for him at the same time every evening, and sometimes he had to squeeze his eyes shut tight to keep back the tears.

That the time on board the great steamship going south to the Tropics, and the time in New England was vastly different, did not enter Bobby's mind. It just seemed to him as though his mother was very near him indeed as he knelt before his chair.

For a sturdy, busy boy, however, there was not much time for worriment. Every day there was something new; one could not be lonesome at Rockledge.

The boys went from their beds to breakfast, from their meals to work in the schoolroom, from their lessons to play--a continual round of activities.

The athletic instruction interested the chums from Clinton immensely, and until the real cool weather set in, the boys of the school enjoyed swimming in the lake every day.

Dr. Raymond hoped that, before long, he would be able to build a gymnasium with a swimming pool in a special building by itself. This was something to look forward to, however.

All aquatic sports did not stop when the frost came. There were plenty of boats belonging to the school--from light, flat-bottomed skiffs which the little fellows could not possibly tip over, to a fine eight-oared shell manned by the bigger boys. In this they raced the Belden School every June before Commencement.

Wednesday and Saturday afternoons were holidays, but without special permission the boys of the Lower School could not go out of bounds. On Saturdays the bigger boys went to town if they so desired, or took long tramps through the woods, or rowed to the upper end of the lake.

If the smaller fellows wanted to go out of bounds, usually a teacher went with them. There was a picnic of the Lower School on one of the islands in the lake, however, that Bobby and Fred were not likely to forget for a long time.

Pee Wee and Mouser got it up. They first got permission to take a cold dinner on Saturday and row to the island. There was a farmer whose land joined the school property on the east. From him they obtained several dozen ears of late greencorn--nubbins, but sweet as sugar--and some new potatoes.

They were excused from lessons that day at eleven--all but Pee Wee himself. He had been lazy, as usual, and was behind in his work. It looked, for a time, as though the picnic had to be delayed.

But urged on by the others, Bobby faced Mr. Carrin, who had Pee Wee's class in history, and begged the fat boy off.

"_Do_ let him do the extra work to-night, sir, after supper," begged Bobby. "We were going to have such a nice time, and Pee--I mean Perry--got the picnic up, and--"

"It is a pity that Perry cannot spend a little of his mind and effort on his lessons," said Mr. Carrin, with a smile.

"Yes, sir. I know, sir," said Bobby, eagerly, "but he doesn't seem to be able to think of two things at once."

"I guess that is right," chuckled Mr. Carrin, who was a much more pleasant gentleman than Mr. Leith. "Tell him he may go, but I shall expect a perfect recitation on Monday morning, first thing."

"Huh!" growled Pee Wee, who had overheard some of this. "I'm glad enough to get off, Bobby Blake. But you needn't have told him I was weak-minded."

Bobby grinned at him. "What do you care if you _are_ a little bit crazy? And I didn't tell him anything new. He was on to it."

The crowd rowed off in three boats. There were seventeen of them. They went to the upper island, which was the biggest, in an hour and a half, and as soon as they landed they set to work to build a fire and make the picnic dinner.

Of course, they were too hungry to wait until the potatoes were baked, but as soon as the light wood had burned down to ashes and coals, they thrust the potatoes under the bed of the fire to bake slowly.

Meanwhile they ate the sandwiches and cake they had brought from school, and each boy cut a stick, on the end of which he stuck an ear of corn. These ears they roasted in the flames.

Of course, they were scorched a little, but they had butter and pepper and salt with which to dress the corn and it _did_ taste mighty nice!

"And there's pretty near a bushel of the potatoes," said Fred, happily. "After the fire dies down again, we can rake them out and eat them. There's a big dab of butter left and plenty of salt and pepper. Crickey! I could eat a peck of them myself."

"We ought to have brought more potatoes and corn along," suggested Pee Wee, licking his fingers, "and hidden the stuff here somewhere. Then we could come another day and have a bake like this."

"Say! the corn wouldn't be much good," Bobby said.

"Scubbity-_yow_!" yelled Fred, suddenly. "I have it."

"Gee! you must have it bad," responded Mouser. "What kind of a battlecry _is_ that?"

"Say!" went on Fred, without paying the least attention to Mouser's question, "I've got the dandy idea."

"Let's have it?" proposed Bobby.

"Let's build a shack, or a cabin, or something, up there in the thick trees. Nobody would ever see it from the lake. Then we can bring things over to furnish it--on the sly, you know--"

"Why on the sly?" demanded his chum.

"Aw--well--if the other fellows knew it, they'd come and bust it up, wouldn't they?"

"Not our fellows," declared Shiner.

"But you bet the kids from Belden would," urged Pee Wee.

"We could keep still about it, I s'pose," admitted Bobby.

"Well, then!" returned Fred. "Now, we'd fit it up, and store stuff in it for winter--nuts, and popcorn, and 'taters, and turnips--"

"You can't bake turnips," objected Howell Purdy.

"Well! they're good raw, aren't they?" demanded the eager Fred.

"It's a great old scheme," declared Jimmy Ailshine, otherwise "Shiner." "Let's get at it at once. Skeets Brody has his ax. Come on!"

And the excited boys trooped away from the beach and left the potatoes under the coals of the campfire to finish cooking.