Page:Stanwood Pier--Crashaw brothers.djvu/114

96 some of the boys protested. He took them bare-legged across fields when the snow was  ankle-deep; he spurred them up icy slopes;  on thawy days he splashed them along muddy  roads until they were all a sorry-looking sight.

They complained that they were n’t out for cross-country runs, that he was giving them  chilblains, and that they did n’t see what this  sort of treatment had to do with rowing anyway.

“Toughens you up,” said Edward, with a cheerful grin. “Come on; you’re getting husky.”

He was having a pretty good time out of it; yet there were moments when he could not  help envying other boys. When in the late afternoon, on the run home to the gymnasium,  he passed the pond where the hockey players  were flying about on the ice, with the ringing  rush of the skates and the clashing scrimmage  of the sticks, what he was doing seemed stupid  and plodding by comparison.

He had an eye for the picturesqueness and the grace of the skaters; he liked to see a line