Part 8

But Mamsie was far away from her boys, whom she had put at Dr. Marks' school for the very purpose of achieving self-reliance and obedience to the training of the little brown house. So Davie, smothering his longing, got into a front row with several boys of his set, and bent all his attention to the game just beginning.

Sharp at two o'clock the four went on to the court--Joel and Fred Ricketson against Tom Beresford and Lawrence Greene, otherwise "Larry." And amid howls of support from the "rooters," the game began.

At first Joel's luck seemed to desert him, and he played wild, causing much consternation in the ranks violently rooting for him. David's head sank, and he leaned his elbows on his knees, to bury his hot cheeks in his hands.

"Wake up," cried Paul Sykes, his very particular friend, hoarsely, giving him a dig in the ribs. "Don't collapse, Dave."

"Oh!" groaned David, his head sinking lower yet, "I can't look; I simply can't. It will kill Joel."

"Stiffen up!" cried Paul. "Joe's all right; he'll come to. Ha!"

A shout, stunning at first, that finally bore down all before it in the shape of opposing enthusiasm, swept over the whole yard. Screams of applause, perfectly deafening, rent the air. And look! even the visitors from St. Andrew's are leaping to their feet, and yelling, "Good--good." Something quite out of the common, even in a close tennis match, was taking place. David shuddered, and crouched down on the ground as far as he could. Paul gave him an awful whack on the back.

"You're losing it all," he cried as he stood on his tiptoes. "Hi! Hi! Tippety Rippety! Hi! Hi!"

It was Joel's especial yell; and there he was, as David scrambled up to see him, head thrown back, and black eyes shining in the way they always did when he worked for Mamsie and Polly, and that dealt despair to all opponents. He had just made a brilliant stroke, returning one of Larry's swiftest balls in such a manner that it just skimmed over the net and passed the boys before they could recover themselves, and fairly taking off from their feet the St. Andrew's men who had been misled by Joel's previous slow playing in the first set, which Tom and Larry had won.

"Who is he? Gee Whiz! but that's good form!" declared Vincent Parry, the St. Andrew's champion, excitedly.

"Pepper--don't you know Pepper?" cried a dozen throats, trying to seem unconscious that it was Parry, the champion, who was asking the question.

"Oh, is that Pepper?" said the St. Andrew's boy. While "Pepper--Pepper. Hi! Hi! Tippety Rippety! Hi! Hi!" rolled out, till there wasn't any other sound to be heard. And a regular tussle of boys were getting in the wildest excitement when it was announced that Pepper and Ricketson had won the second set, the referees trying to quiet them so that the game could proceed.

In the third set, Joel seemed to have it all his own way, and fairly swept Ricketson along with him. The excitement was now so intense that the boys forgot to yell, afraid they would miss some strokes.

David clenched his hands tightly. The net and flying balls spun all together inextricably before his eyes as he strained them to see Joe's brilliant returns. This was the deciding set, as the cup was to go to the winners of two sets out of three.

Joel's last serve was what finished it; the ball flashing by Tom with such impetus, that even the St. Andrew's champion said he couldn't ever have returned it.

Everybody drew a long breath, and then the crowd rushed and converged to Joel; surrounded him, fighting for first place, the fortunate ones tossing him up to their shoulders to race him in triumph around the yard.

"Take Ricket!" screamed Joel, red in the face. "Take him!" he roared. "He beat too, as much as I." So a second group seized Fred; and up he went to be trotted after, the crowd swarming alongside, yelling, tumbling over each other,--gone perfectly wild; Joe waving the cup, thrust into his hand, which would be kept by the winners for a year.

* * * * *

It was the middle of the night. Davie, flushed with the happiest thoughts, had peacefully settled to dreams in which Mamsie and Grandpapa, and Polly and Jasper, and all the dear home people, were tangled up. And Phronsie seemed to be waving a big silver cup, and piping out with a glad little laugh, "Oh, I am so glad!" And now and then the scene of operations flew off to the little brown house, that it appeared impossible to keep quite out of dreamland. Some one gripped him by the arm.

"Oh, what is it, Joe?" David flew up to a sitting posture in the middle of his bed.

"It isn't Joe. Get up as quick as you can."

David, with a dreadful feeling at his heart, tumbled out of bed. "Isn't Joe!" he found time to say, with a glance in the darkness over toward Joel's bed.

"Hurry up, don't stop to talk." The voice was Tom Beresford's. "Get on your clothes."

Meantime he was scuffing around. "Where in time are your shoes?" But David already had those articles, and was pulling them on with hasty fingers. "Oh, tell me," he couldn't help crying; but "Hurry up!" was all he got for his pains. And at last, after what seemed an age to Tom, David was piloted out into the hall, with many adjurations to "go softly," down the long flight of stairs. Here he came to a dead stop. "I can't go another single step, Tom," he said firmly, "unless you tell me what you want me for. And where is Joel?" he gasped.

"Oh, bother! in another minute you'd have been outside, and then it would be safe to tell you," said Tom. "Well, if you will have it, Dave, Joe's finishing up that business with Jenk, and you're the only one that can stop it. Now don't keel over."

David clung to the door, which Tom had managed to open softly, and for a minute it looked as if Beresford would have his hands full without in the least benefiting Joel. But suddenly he straightened up. "Oh, tell me where he is," he cried, in a manner and voice exactly like Polly when she had anything that must be done set before her. And clear ahead of his guide when Tom whispered, "Down in the pine grove," sped Davie on the very wings of the wind.

"Gracious! Joel is nothing to Dave as a sprinter," said Tom to himself, as his long legs got him over the ground in the rear.

The two boys hugged the shadow of the tall trees and dashed across the lawn to the shrubbery beyond. Then it was but a breathing space, and a few good leaps to the depths of the pine grove. In the midst of this were two figures, busily engaged in the cheerful occupation of fisticuffing each other till the stronger might win.