Crofton Chums

“Sort of a jimmy nose,” laughed the boy. “Sis, if you keep on coining words, you’ll have to publish a vocabulary or no one will be able to understand you. What was it you called...

“I just know you’re going to be a real football hero, Jim,” she declared earnestly. “And I shall be too proud of you for words! And to-morrow I shall go and see you play.”

For a time it seemed that the race would come to an ignominious end then and there, for the other canoes, or such of them as were paddled by two or more fellows, followed so clo...

That night there was a celebration at Sunnywood. Jeffrey began it with two bottles of ginger ale which he produced after study hour. They drank Jim’s health in that enticing bev...

With the ringing of chapel bell in the old stone turret of Academy Hall the next morning Crofton began its forty-third year. Seven-fifteen seemed to come extremely early, for no...

The day of the Hawthorne game dawned cold and gray, with a chill breeze out of the east that held a tang of the ocean thirty miles away. Hawthorne came along, nearly two hundred...

At a quarter before five that afternoon the expressman landed the last of Gil’s and Poke’s belongings in the corner room at Sunnywood Cottage. On his final trip upstairs the exp...

The sound of the talking had brought the others from the table to the hall below, and now Mrs. Hazard came up the stairs to inquire anxiously: “What is it, Jim? Is anything wrong?”

“Yes, but what’s two when there are forty fellows to look after? That’s different. Here there are only four of us, and, besides, he’s right next door. Not, of course,” he contin...

Jim kept his promise; in fact, he was given no choice in the matter, for Poke was waiting for him on the steps of Academy Hall when he emerged from his algebra recitation the ne...

“No. I took his tray up and he was writing at his desk. I told him he just must eat some supper and he said we were very kind and he would drink some tea. And then――then he was...

“I think,” remarked Mr. Groff, the next morning, “that I could count on one hand the students who have studied their algebra. Wyman, Latham, Nutter, Hazard――if there is another...

They were off at nine o’clock the next morning, Jeffrey and Poke in one canoe and Jim and Gil and Hope in another. The basket of luncheon reposed between Jeffrey and Poke, the l...

Jeffrey and Hope failed in their plan to entice Mrs. Hazard to the game that afternoon. When they reached Sunnywood dinner was just over and Mrs. Hazard and Mr. Hanks were comin...

Half an hour later the two were seated on opposite sides of the table in Jeff’s room, their books spread out before them in a very businesslike way. But there wasn’t much studyi...

Poke possessed the ability to awake in the morning at approximately whatever hour he had decided upon the night before, a most convenient gift that saved the price of an alarm c...

sang “Poke” Endicott, as he pulled a nice new pair of fawn-hued football pants from his trunk and reverently strove to smooth the creases from them. “Aren’t those some pants, Gi...

“What made you do such a silly thing?” asked Jeffrey of Poke as they hurried back to Academy Hall. “You know very well he can paddle faster than you can.”

The canoe came on Wednesday. Of course by this time, as Gil had predicted, its name had been shortened to “Mike,” which was a very plebeian title for such a handsome craft. It w...

There was a depressed silence until Jim said feebly: “Call it ‘Noname.’” This met with the reception it deserved. Hope knitted her brows and forgot, in her absorption, to finish...

Whether Mr. Hanks meant to profit by the advice so frankly given him remained a question for several days. On Friday his classes in Latin and history presented the usual disorde...

“We are still studying,” responded Poke. “Please try to abstain from slang, Mr. Latham. I don’t care so much about myself, but it sets a bad example for my friend across the tab...

“You could have knocked me over with a feather,” declared Poke――the four Sunnywood boys were on their way back to the cottage at noon――“and I never thought Nancy Hanks had it in...

That kick-off was a fizzle. St. Luke’s got the ball on her twenty-five yards, ran it back ten and then her full-back broke through the Crofton left side for twenty yards, and th...

Instructed by its coach, Hawthorne began to hammer the right side of Crofton’s line at the start. Gould hurled his backs time and again at Needham and at Captain Sargent. Gain a...