"When will that day come?"
"It will come, sir, when public-spirited citizens everywhere go in strongly for athletics in the High Schools, as they did in the town where Holmes and I received our earlier training."
The letter from Cadet Prescott"s mother came almost by return mail. She had never for a moment lost faith, she wrote, that all would come out right with her boy, and she was heartily glad that her faith had been justified. She was sorry, indeed, for that unfortunate other cadet whose enmity for d.i.c.k had been his own undoing in the long run.
It was some days later when Laura"s letter reached the now eager pitcher of the Army nine.
Now that letter was cordial enough in every way, and Laura made no secret of her delight and of her pride in her friend.
"Yet there"s something lacking here," murmured Prescott uneasily, as he read the letter through once more. "What is it? Laura writes as if she were trying to show more reserve with me than she did once. What is the matter? Has she cooled toward me at just the time when I shall soon be able to offer her my name and my future?"
The thought was torment. Nor, of course, did d.i.c.k fail to remember all about that prosperous and agreeable Gridley merchant, Leonard Cameron, who, for upwards of two years, had been one of Miss Bentley"s most devoted admirers.
"I suppose he"s the kind of fellow who is calculated to please a woman," mused d.i.c.k with a sinking at heart. "And Cameron has had the great advantage of being right on the spot all the time.
Moreover, he has had his future mapped out for him, while I wasn"t a.s.sured about my own, and he hasn"t been afraid to speak. Great Scott, I must wait until the night of the graduation ball before I can speak and find out how the land lies for me. But is Laura coming to that hop?"
Again d.i.c.k ran hastily through the letter. Yet, look as he would, he could find no allusion of Laura"s to coming on for the Graduation Hop.
"What an idiot I am!" growled Prescott to himself. "I"m certain I forgot to ask her, in my last letter. If I did, it was solely because I"ve always been so sure that she"d be on here for graduation week as a matter of course."
After pacing his room for a few moments, d.i.c.k sat down and wrote feverishly back to Laura Bentley, asking her if she were coming on for graduation and the hop.
"I"ve always looked forward to having you here as a matter of course on that great occasion," d.i.c.k penned, "so I"m not very certain that I have made the invitation as explicit as I"ve meant to. But you"ll come, won"t you, Laura? It would be a poor graduation for me, without your face in the throng, for the others will be strangers to me. Won"t you please write promptly and set my mind at ease on this vital point?"
In three days Laura"s answer came. Unless unavoidably prevented she would be on hand during a part of graduation week.
"And I certainly want to attend the graduation hop," Laura added, "for it will probably be the only one that I shall ever have a chance to attend."
"Now, what does she mean by that last statement?" pondered d.i.c.k, finding new cause for worry. "Does she mean that she expects to cut the Army after this year? Is she really planning to marry that fellow Cameron? Gracious, how time has flown during these hurried years at West Point! For two years past Laura has been fully old enough to wed! What a folly she"d commit in waiting all these years for backward me to get ready to open my lips!
Yes; I guess it"s going to be Cameron."
Cadet Prescott compressed his lips grimly, but he was soldier enough to be game and face the music.
"I"ve got to be patient a few weeks more, and take the chances,"
d.i.c.k told himself, as he scurried away to daily ball practice.
"With a rival in the field I wouldn"t dare, anyway, to trust my fate to a pleading set down on paper. But I"ll send Laura a letter once a week now, anyway. She may guess from that, as graduation approaches, that I am sending my thoughts more and more in her direction."
With the bravery of which he was so capable, d.i.c.k ceased his worry about his sweetheart as much as he could, and threw his leisure hours heartily into his work in the ball squad.
It will not be possible to describe the games of the season in detail. There were twenty scheduled games in all, though three were called off on account of rain. The Army won twelve out of sixteen games played with college teams. d.i.c.k and Greg were the battery in the heaviest nine of the winning games, and in one of the games lost.
Prescott and Holmes had no difficulty in putting up a game that has sent them down in history as being the best Army battery to that date.
But the Navy, that year, had an exceptionally fine team, too, with Dave Darrin and Dalzell for its star battery.
"This is the game we"ve got to win, fellows," called out Durville earnestly, two days before the Annapolis nine was due at West Point in the latter part of May. "We"ve done finely this year, better than we had hoped. But, after all, what is it to beat every other college, and then have to go down before the Navy in defeat at the end?"
"Who says we"re going down in defeat?" grumbled Greg.
"If you say we"re not, you and Prescott, then you can do a lot to hearten us up," continued Durville, with a sharp glance at the star battery pair.
"See here, old ramrod, you know all about that Annapolis battery,"
broke in Hackett, of the nine. "What about them as ball players?
I understand you went to school with Darrin and Dalzell. Do that pair play ball the way they do football?"
"Yes," nodded d.i.c.k. "If anything, they play baseball better."
"But you and Holmesy put them out at football. Can"t you do it on the diamond, too?" insisted Hackett.
"I hope so, but Greg and I will feel a lot more like bragging, possibly, after we"ve played the game through. There isn"t much brag about us now, eh, Greg?"
"Not much," confessed Greg. "And you fellows want to remember that old ramrod and I are to play only two out of the nine positions.
Don"t depend on us to play the whole game for the Army."
"Of course not," agreed Hackett, perhaps a bit tartly. "But if the other seven of us were wonders we"d stand no show unless we had a battery that can do up these awful ogres of the Navy nine."
"Oh, you"re better than the Navy battery, aren"t you, old ramrod?"
demanded Beckwith.
"No, we"re not," replied d.i.c.k slowly, thoughtfully.
"Don"t tell us that the salt-water catcher and pitcher are ahead of you two!" protested Durville with new anxiety.
"If either crowd is better, they"re likely to be It," murmured d.i.c.k.
Thereupon all in the dressing room wheeled to take a look at Greg.
But young Holmes nodded his head in confirmation.
"Don"t talk that way," pleaded Beckwith.
"You"ll have us all scared cold before we touch foot to the field day after to-morrow."
"Just what I said," grumbled Greg. "Some of the fellows on the Army nine expect two men who are not above the average to win the whole game."
From all private and newspaper accounts many of the West Point fans were inclined to the belief that the Navy outpointed the Army in the matter of battery. It had been so the year before when, as readers of "_Dave Darrin"s Third Year At Annapolis_" will recall, the Navy had succeeded in carrying the game away with neatness and despatch.
"You young men have simply got to hustle and keep cool. That"s all you can do," urged Lieutenant Lawrence. "We haven"t had so good a nine in years. Whatever you do, don"t lie down at the last moment, and give up to the Navy the only game of the year that is really worth winning."
Then came two hard afternoons of practice. Every onlooker watched d.i.c.k and Greg closely, anxious to make sure that neither young man was going stale.
With each added hour it must be confessed that anxiety at West Point rose another notch.
Then came the day of the game. Even the tireless and merciless instructors over in the Academic Building eased up a bit on the cadets that day, if ever the instructors did such a thing.
The Annapolis nine arrived before one o"clock and was promptly taken to dinner.
All that forenoon, the factions had been gathering.