Part 7

"He's pitched into Jenk--and they've had a fight--and they're all blood--and the old Fox almost got 'em both." Then he shut his mouth suddenly, the whole being told.

Davie put both hands to his head. For a minute everything turned dark around him. Then he thought of Mamsie. "Oh dear me!" he said, coming to.

"How I wish he'd had it all out with that beggar!" exploded Bates longingly.

David didn't say anything, being just then without words. At this instant Joel rushed in with his bloody nose, and a torn sleeve where Jenk in his desperation had gripped it fast.

"Oh Joel!" screamed Davie at sight of him, and springing from his shoe-box. "Are you hurt? Oh Joey!"

"Phoo! that's nothing," said Joel, running over to the wash-basin, and plunging his head in, to come up bright and smiling. "See, Dave, I'm all right," he announced, his black eyes shining. "But he's a mean beggar to steal my new racket," he concluded angrily.

"To steal your new racket that Grandpapa sent you!" echoed David. "Oh dear me! who has taken it? Oh Joel!"

"That beggar Jenkins," exploded Joel. "But I'm to know where it is." Just then the door opened cautiously, enough to admit a head. "Don't speak, Pepper, but come."

Joel flung down the towel, and pranced to the door.

"No one else," said the boy to whom the head belonged.

"Not me?" asked David longingly. "Can't I come?"

"No--no one but Joe." Joel rushed over the sill tumultuously, deserting David and the Bates boy.

"Don't speak a single word," said the boy out in the hall, putting his mouth close to Joel's ear, "but move lively."

No need to tell him so. In a minute they were both before the housemaid's closet.

"Feel under," whispered the boy, with a sharp eye down the length of the hall.

Joel's brown hands pawed among the cleaning-cloths and brushes, bringing up in a trice the racket, Grandpapa's gift, to flourish it high.

"Take care; keep it down," said the boy in a hurried whisper.

"Oh, oh!" cried Joel, hanging to it in a transport.

"Um," the boy nodded. "Hush, be still. Now skip for your room."

"Beresford," said Joel, his black eyes shining as he paused a breathing space before rushing back to Davie, the new racket gripped fast, "if I don't pay Jenk for this!"

"Do." Tom grinned all over his face in great delight; "you'll be a public benefactor," and he softly beat his hands together.

II THE TENNIS MATCH

Joel, hugging his recovered tennis racket, rushed off to the court. Tom Beresford, staring out of his window, paused while pulling on his sweater to see him go, a sorry little feeling at his heart, after all, at Joe's good spirits.

"He'll play like the mischief, and a great deal better for the row and the fright over that old racket. Well, I had to tell. 'Twould have been too mean for anything to have kept still."

So he smothered a sigh, and got into his togs, seized his implements of battle, and dashed off too. Streams of boys were rushing down to the court, and the yard was black with them. In the best places were the visitors. Royalty couldn't have held stronger claims to distinction in the eyes of Dr. Marks' boys; and many were the anxious glances sent over at the four St. Andrew's boys. If the playing shouldn't come up to the usual high mark!

"Pepper will score high," one after another said as he dropped to the ground next to his chums, in the circle around the court.

"Of course." Nobody seemed to doubt Joel's powers along that line. "He always does." And cries of "Pepper--Pepper," were taken up, and resounded over the yard.

Joel heard it as he dashed along, and he held his head high, well pleased. But David followed his every movement with anxiety. "I'm afraid he was hurt," he said to himself; "and if he should lose the game, he'd never get over it. Oh dear me! if Mamsie could only be here!"