Frank Merriwell's Return to Yale Part 65

She spoke the words just loud enough for Frank to hear, but he did not seem to understand. Like one in a dream, he took his cap from the rack and turned toward the door.

"Good-day, Mr. Merriwell," called the old maid.

"Eh? Oh! Good-day!"

Frank paused at the door and looked back; then he spoke, loudly enough to be heard in the library:

"I shall be pleased to see you at any time, Miss Gale, but, if you call on me, perhaps it would be well not to bring a certain person with you.

It might be embarra.s.sing and unpleasant. Good-day."

Bounding down the steps, Frank walked swiftly away. There was a hard, set look on his face, which had grown singularly pale.

"Yes," he muttered, "I understand it all now. She would not tell me why she did not wish me to play on the eleven, but I know now. Somewhere she has met Rob Marline, and she is stuck on him. He wanted to play full-back for Yale, and she aided him all she could by inducing me to promise that I would not play. I see through the whole game! She was playing me for a fool! I did not think that of her, but it is as clear as crystal."

And Marline had cut him out with Inza! He felt sure of that.

"Well," he grated, "I have been easy with that fellow. Now we are enemies to the bitter end! Let him look out for me!"

CHAPTER x.x.xIX.

THE HOMEWARD JOURNEY.

"What's the matter with Merriwell?" asked Lewis Little, speaking to a group of jolly lads who were on the train that bore the Yale football team out of Boston on its way to New Haven. "He's grouchy."

"Is he?" cried Paul Pierson. "Well, he ought to be ashamed of himself!

Why, he's the hero of the day! All the papers will have his picture to-morrow. I saw at least five persons snapping him with cameras on the field. Grouchy, is he? Well, confound him! He has no right to get a grouch on."

"Not a bit of it!" cried Charlie Creighton. "What's the matter with him?

Where is he?"

"He's sitting back in the end of the car, looking fierce enough to eat anybody."

Creighton, Pierson and several others sprang to their feet and looked for Frank. They saw him.

He was staring out of the window in a blank manner, although he did not seem to notice anything the train pa.s.sed. He was paying no attention to the gang of shouting, singing, laughing students, who filled the smoker and were perched on the backs of the seats and crowded into the aisles.

"Hey, Merry!" shouted Creighton. "Shake it, old man--shake it! Come up here! Get into the game!"

Frank looked around, shook his head, and then looked out of the window again.

"Well, hang him!" growled Charlie. "Any one would think he had played with Harvard, instead of winning the game for Yale! What can be the matter with him?"

No one seemed to know. Creighton went down and talked to Frank, but could get no satisfaction out of him.

As soon as he was let alone again, Merriwell fell to gazing out of the window, seeming quite unaware of the shouts and songs of the jolly lads in the car.

When strangers crowded into the car to get a look at the man who had won the game for Yale, having heard he was on the train, he still continued to gaze out of the window, and it was not apparent that he heard any of their remarks.

"Tell you what," said Creighton, as he returned to Pierson and the others of the little group, "Merriwell is sore."

"Sore?" cried Tom Thornton, "he can't be any sorer than I am! Why, I was jumped on, kicked, rammed into the earth, and annihilated more than twenty times during that game. A little more of it would have made a regular jellyfish out of me. I'll be sore for a month, but I believe in being jolly at the same time."

Then he broke forth into a song of victory, in which every one in that car seemed to join, judging by the manner in which the chorus was roared forth.

"Boom-to-de-ay, boom-ta-de-ay, Boom-to, de-boom-ta, de-boom-ta-de-ay; We won to-day, we won to-day, We won, oh, we won, oh, we won to-day."

Any one who has not heard a great crowd of college lads singing this chorus cannot conceive the volume of sound it seems to produce. When they all "bear down together" on the "boom-ta," the explosive sound is like a staggering blow from the shoulder.

But even this song of victory did not seem to arouse Frank in the least.

He remained silent and grim, being so much unlike his usual self that all who knew him were filled with astonishment.

"I did not mean that he was sore of body," said Creighton. "I think he is chewing an old rag."

"What do you mean by that?"

"Well, you know, we all gave him the marble heart when we thought he had decided not to play football because he was afraid for certain reasons.

I think he is sore over that, and I don't know that I blame him. I swear, fellows, we did use him shabby!"

"That's it," nodded Pierson; "that's just it. And he is proud and sensitive. He would not show he cared a continental before the game, but, now he was the means of saving the day for Yale, I fancy he is chewing over it a little."

"Never thought of that," said Bink Stubbs. "Bet you're right, fellows.

We'll have to get down on our hulks to him to make it all right. I'm ready to say I'm ashamed of myself, and ask him to forget it."

The others expressed themselves as equally willing, and so it came about that Frank was much surprised to have them come to him, one after another, and confess they had used him shabbily. He was ready enough to shake hands with them all, while he a.s.sured them he did not hold the least hardness.

They saw he was in earnest, they were satisfied he was willing and ready to forget they had ever treated him with contempt, and yet he did not cheer up, which was something they could not understand.

"Better let him alone," advised Creighton, after a little. "It may be something we don't know anything about, that he is chewing. Anyway, he's not himself."

Bruce Browning, big and lazy ever, was one of the group. He had been keeping still, but now he observed:

"That's right, let him alone. I've traveled with him, and I never saw him this way before. I tell you he is dangerous, and somebody may get hurt."

"Keep away from the window, my love and my dove-- Keep away from the window, don't you hear!

Come round some other night, For there's gwine to be a fight, And there'll be razzers a-flyn' through the air."

Thus sang Bink Stubbs.

"Look at Harris!" laughed Thornton, nudging the fellow nearest him.

"Don't he look sour? They say he got hit to-day."

"Got hit?"

"Yes."