CHAPTER XVIII

BUILDING THE RINK

There may be better ways of putting one’s self in condition to do justice to a Thanksgiving Day dinner than paddling a mile and a half in a canoe, walking five miles after that and finishing up with a forty-mile ride in an automobile. If there are, I can’t think of them at this moment. And at all events never, surely, were four hungrier boys ever gathered around a table than the quartet that did full and ample justice to Mr. Pennimore’s hospitality that evening. I shan’t go into many details regarding that repast, for I don’t want to make you envious, but it was an old-fashioned Thanksgiving banquet, with oysters from the host’s own oyster beds, a clear soup, celery and olives, a turkey that, as Alf said, would have been an ostrich if it had lived another day or two, a roast ham that fell to pieces under the carving knife, vegetables without end, a salad that held most all the colors of the rainbow and as many flavors, a pumpkin pie looking like a full harvest moon, ice cream and sherbet in the form of turkeys seated on nests of yellow spun sugar, little cakes with all shades of icing, black grapes nearly as big as golf balls from the Sound View conservatories, apples like the pictures in nursery catalogues, oranges, pears, nuts and raisins and candy. And there was all the sweet cider they wanted, and, finally, black coffee and toasted crackers and some cheese that Tom helped himself to lavishly and afterwards viewed with deep suspicion.

It was almost nine when the chairs were pushed back and the diners adjourned to the big crackling fire in the library. Tom lowered himself cautiously into an armchair with a blissful groan.

“I don’t believe,” he said, “that I shall want to eat again until Christmas. I know now why the Puritans used to go to church in the morning on Thanksgiving Day. They never would have had enough energy to give thanks after dinner!”

Mr. Pennimore led the talk around to subjects nearest to the hearts of his guests and soon had them chattering merrily of school and sports. Tom begged him to come over some time and see a basket ball game.

“I’d like to,” said Mr. Pennimore, “but you know I close the house here to-morrow and go back to New York. I hardly think I shall be in Wissining again before spring. I’m sorry I can’t see some of your winter sports, Tom.”

“You ought to see us lick Broadwood at hockey,” said Gerald.

“Hockey? Let me see, we used to call that shinny or shinty when I was a boy, didn’t we?”

Alf explained the modern form of the game and they talked over the outlook for the season. “I’m going to get the team together in about a week,” he said. “Sometimes we have fairly good ice before Christmas, and when we don’t we can get a lot of practice at shooting in the gym. I’m going to try and make a goal out of Dan.”

“I’d like to play myself,” said Tom, “if Dan’s going to be the goal. What’s he going to do? Stand and hold his mouth open?”

“I’m going to try for the team, too, sir,” said Gerald importantly.

“Are you?” asked his father with a smile. “Well, don’t get hurt, son. Ice is hard stuff to fall on, and it seems to me that I recollect getting hit once or twice on the shins with a stick. It was rather painful, I believe.”

“It hurts like the dickens,” laughed Alf. “And when your hands are cold and some one raps them it feels as though they were busted.”

“What do you play for?” asked Mr. Pennimore. “I mean what is the trophy?”

“There isn’t any, sir. We just play for the honor. Beating Broadwood is enough in itself.”

“Ah, I see. I was going to propose putting a cup up. How would that do?”

“Great!” exclaimed Alf.

“Go ahead, dad!” said Gerald eagerly. “A great big one!”

“Oh, I don’t think it’s necessary to have it very big, is it, Alf? Suppose I offer a cup to be played for for three years, the team winning twice to take permanent possession. Would that be a good plan?”

“Yes, sir, it would be a dandy idea,” answered Alf with enthusiasm. “The team that won it this year could keep it until next. It would be mighty nice of you, sir.”

“All right, I’ll attend to it when I get to town. I’ll have the silversmith make a sketch and send it down for you to pass on. I suppose he will have some ideas on the subject.”

“How big would it be, sir?” asked Gerald.

“Oh, I’ll leave that to you boys. What do you say, Alf?”

“I should think about eight inches high, sir; a sort of a loving-cup effect.”

“They might work in some crossed hockey sticks,” Dan suggested, “and the Yardley and Broadwood flags.”

“Yes, that’s a good idea. I’ll remember that. You see what you think of the design that’s sent you, Alf, and then write the firm and suggest any changes you like. We’ll call it the――what shall we call it?”

“The Pennimore Cup, sir,” answered Alf and Tom in chorus.

“Hum; no, I’m not looking for glory. Let’s call it the Sound View Cup. How will that do?”

“Pennimore Cup sounds better, sir,” said Dan.

“I think so, too,” Alf agreed. “Let’s call it that, sir.”

“All right,” laughed their host. “I haven’t any objection. The Pennimore Cup it is, then. And I hope you fellows get it for good in the end.”

“I hope we get it this year, anyway,” said Alf. “I’ll get French――he’s our manager――to write over and tell Broadwood about it. It ought to please them.”

“It’ll please them so much,” murmured Tom sleepily, “that they’ll come over here and carry it home with them.”

“If they do it will be after the hardest tussle they ever had,” declared Alf. “We’re going to have a hockey seven that will be a dandy!”

Dan and Alf and Tom said good night and good-by at ten. Gerald, since his father was to take his departure on the morrow, had obtained permission to spend the night at Sound View. The others shook hands with Mr. Pennimore on the porch and then piled into the automobile and were whisked home, a very tired and sleepy and contented trio. By all the rules and laws of compensation every last one of them ought to have suffered that night with indigestion. But they didn’t. Instead, they dropped into sound sleep as soon as their heads touched the pillows and never woke until the sunlight was streaming in at the windows.

The lost canoes were recovered the next day. Alf’s was found caught on a snag at the up-stream end of Flat Island, Dan’s beached just below the railroad bridge. Some one had evidently seen it and pulled it ashore, thereby earning Dan’s deep gratitude.

A few days later the candidates for the hockey team were summoned to a meeting in the gymnasium and Alf outlined the season’s plans to them. Faculty had agreed to allow them a schedule of eight games, with the Broadwood contest closing the season on the twentieth of February. The first game, with St. John’s, was arranged for January ninth. Alf said he wanted the fellows to put in every moment possible during the Christmas recess on skates.

“Play hockey if you can. If you can’t, take a hockey stick with you and learn to use it with both hands. Buy a puck and try shooting, too. Put a couple of sticks or stones on the ice and try to shoot the puck between them. You ought all of you to have a fair idea of hockey by the time you get back to school. We have a few dollars in the treasury already, but we are going to use that to build a rink on the meadow. So every fellow will have to buy his own sticks this year. From now until vacation there will be practice every afternoon but Saturdays in the baseball cage or in the rowing room. Of course, if we get ice we’ll go out of doors. You’d better each of you buy a book of rules and study it. You can get the book in Greenburg at Proctor’s, and it costs you only ten cents. So don’t tell me you can’t afford it. Any fellow who thinks that’s too much money, however, can go to French and he will buy the book for him. That’s all for this time, I guess. Four o’clock Monday next here in the gym.”

“Shall we wear skates?” some one inquired.

“You may wear roller skates if you have them,” replied Alf, joining in the laughter. “We don’t expect to learn to skate indoors, however, simply to use the stick and shoot. By the way, though, there is one more thing. We’ve got to get the rink ready before the ground freezes. We’re going to throw up embankments of earth about a foot high. Mr. McCarthy has agreed to do that for us, but he can only work at it an hour or so a day. Now, suppose to-morrow afternoon we all go down and give him a hand. We’d get it done then and would save money, too; and we need all the money we’ve got. What do you say?”

What they said was evident from the fact that the next afternoon some thirty boys of various ages and sizes were merrily throwing up the ground with whatever implements they had been able to requisition. Alf and Dan and Dick French had marked off the ground and set stakes, and before dark the rink was ready for the ground to freeze.

“What I don’t just comprehend,” observed Dan, as they stood in the twilight viewing the result with satisfaction, “is how you propose to get the water in here. The river is about four feet below the level of the rink.”

“Pump it, my dear boy. Mr. McCarthy has a hand pump and he will rig it up over there on the bank. Then we’ll build a trough effect of boards and run the water into the rink.”

“Oh,” said Dan, nodding. “When are you going to do that?”

“Just as soon as the ground freezes hard.”

“What’s that got to do with it?”

“Lots. If the ground isn’t frozen the water will seep into it about as fast as we run it on. Comprehend?”

“Yes, your Highness. It’s quite simple――when you know it. Now let’s go to supper and let it freeze.”

“It won’t do much freezing this sort of weather,” said French. “Smells like snow, doesn’t it?”

“I didn’t know snow had any smell,” said Alf. “What I’d like to do if we could afford it, fellows, is to put planks around the sides.”

“How much would it cost?” asked French.

“I don’t know. I’ll come down to-morrow, though, and see how many planks it would take. They wouldn’t need to be more than ten inches broad. We could sink them two inches under the ice and that would leave eight inches above to stop the puck. You can do a lot better if you have something for the puck to carrom off of. I wish we had as good a rink as Broadwood has.”

“Maybe another year we can,” said French. “If we turn out a good team this winter perhaps the fellows will contribute toward fixing this up.”

“Yes, but I won’t be here,” laughed Alf. “And I find that what is going to happen next year doesn’t interest me as much as it ought to!”

With football over, the school settled for awhile into a quiet untroubled by athletic excitement. To be sure hockey and basket ball candidates practiced busily, but there were no matches to distract attention from study, which was an excellent thing for many of the students, since examination had begun to loom large on the horizon. Gerald, whose attention had been greatly distracted of late, was enabled to placate Mr. McIntyre by greatly improving his class standing in mathematics, a subject which held for him more terrors than any other study.

At four o’clock every afternoon Dan donned huge leg guards and gauntleted gloves, grasped his broad stick and stood heroically in front of the cage which Alf had set on the gymnasium floor and did his best to stop the hard rubber disks that the others sent whizzing or hurtling at him. He got many hard knocks at first, for a puck can make one wince if it manages to come in contact with an unprotected part of one’s anatomy, and Dan had his moments of discouragement. But Alf kept him at it.

“You’re doing finely,” he declared. “And when we get out on the ice you’ll like it better.”

But they were not destined to get out on the ice just then, for there wasn’t any ice. December had apparently made up its mind to be an imitation November. It snowed now and then, and the mornings and evenings were nippy, and there were plenty of cloudy, disagreeable days, but really cold weather avoided the vicinity of Wissining until Christmas vacation arrived. Meanwhile the only event to disturb the even tenor of existence at Yardley was the Winter Debate between Oxford and Cambridge Societies. This came two days before the end of the term and for a week ahead excitement ran high. Every fellow displayed either the light blue of Cambridge or the dark blue of Oxford and enthusiasm bubbled over. No one that we know very well took part for either side. Nor do I remember now the subject for debate. But I do know that it was very weighty, and that Cambridge had the negative side, and that the judges, Messrs. Fry, Austin and Gaddis, of the faculty, remained out quite awhile before rendering their verdict. Tom said this was to avoid having to listen to the efforts of the Glee and Banjo Clubs, but Tom was insufferable that evening, anyhow. He sat with Dan and Alf and Gerald and applauded Oxford’s speakers vehemently and groaned whenever a Cambridge man opened his mouth. He pretended that there was no possibility of doubt as to the result.

“It’s all Oxford,” he declared smugly. “We beat you on logic and eloquence. We have proved conclusively that――that――well, whatever it was is so. You haven’t a leg to stand on. The affirmative wins all along the line.”

“You wait until you hear from the jury,” said Alf darkly. “You fellows had the poorest lot of debaters that ever driveled. Why, that second speaker of yours didn’t know the subject! Just worked a lot of musty jokes, and――――”

But at that moment the judges returned to the hall, the Glee Club cut off the last verse of the song they were struggling with and Mr. Austin advanced smilingly to the front of the platform.

“Good old Stevie,” murmured Tom. “He knows!”

“Yes, and you’ll know in a minute,” whispered Dan.

That wasn’t literally correct, for Mr. Austin had several things to say before he announced the verdict. In Alf’s language, he walked around the stump a dozen times. He said nice things about Cambridge and nice things about Oxford. He complimented each speaker and indulged in a few criticisms. And finally he awarded the victory to Oxford!

Wearers of the dark blue arose and made Rome howl. Tom also arose, pulling down his vest and assuming the air of virtue triumphant, but he sat down again very forcibly, and Dan and Alf vented their disappointment on him until he was glad to subside from the settee and beg mercy from the floor. As they were in the back of the hall, and as nothing they might have done could have been heard above the noise, they made Tom perjure himself over and over; made him declare that Cambridge had won the debate fairly, without a shadow of a doubt, that the judges were biased, ignorant and mendacious, that he personally didn’t know oratory from a ham sandwich, and that Cambridge was the greatest debating society the world had ever known. Then, after he had cheered for Cambridge――twice, because the first time he had spoiled the effect by giggling――they allowed him to get up. Somehow in the operation of arising he managed to upset the bench backward, and in the subsequent confusion they departed hurriedly from the hall.

Two days later school was depopulated of all save a few boys who lived too far away to travel home for vacation and who had not been invited to spend the ten days with friends. Gerald, Tom, Alf and Dan traveled together as far as New York. Gerald remained there, while Tom crossed to his home in New Jersey and Dan accompanied Alf to Philadelphia. Dan’s own home was in Ohio, and as the trip there and back would have spoiled four of the precious days of vacation, he had gladly accepted Alf’s invitation to visit him.