Page:Dave Porter and his Rivals.djvu/280

264 answered ma. Then she saw that the little girl wasn't eating anything, so she asked: 'Why don't you take a cruller, Alice?' 'Oh,' says Alice; 'I had that when I first went to the pantry!

"Wow!" murmured Sam. "That joke came from the ark!"

"It was told to Pharaoh by Napoleon, when they were hunting for the North Pole," added Plum.

"Well, I don't think it hits Nat Poole's case," was Sam's comment. "He won't get any cruller in this game."

"Right you are!" cried Plum.

Plum was as anxious as anybody to defeat the money-lender's son. Since the former bully had turned over a new leaf Nat was constantly saying mean things about him, and it was only Gus's grim determination to "keep the peace" that kept him from pitching into Nat "rough-shod." In keeping his hands off Nat, Plum had a harder battle to fight than if he had attacked the moneylender's son bodily.

It had to be admitted that, as the day for the contest between the two Oak Hall sevens approached, Poole's team was in good shape. Nat had drilled them with care, and had profited by the work of two of the players who had been on another boarding-school seven the winter previous. One of these players knew several sharp tricks,