Page:The purple pennant (IA purplepennant00barb).pdf/265

Rh from the table when the pie comes on is fierce! I haven't had a hunk of pie," he added drearily, "for three weeks, and there's a place right here"—he laid a sympathetic hand over the third button of his vest—"that won't be happy until it gets it!"

However, to make up for the discomforts of dieting, he had the satisfaction of accomplishing Herculean stunts with the twelve-pound hammer. Partridge already viewed him as a probable point-winner, for he had nearly equaled Falkland's best performance and had out-distanced Thad Brimmer by four feet. It was well that Partridge, and Guy Felker, too, dealt out praise and encouragement to Fudge, for the temptation to backslide in the matter of pie dogged him incessantly. There was one tragic night when he lay in bed and fought for all of an hour against the haunting vision of three raisin pies sitting side by side in the pantry downstairs. What eventually vanquished temptation was the knowledge that if he stole down and cut into one of those pies his mother would know it. And after all the fine-sounding speeches he had made to her on the subject of denying one's appetite for the sake of the School, he hadn't the heart for it.

Now that the School had "taken up" athletics it was a lot more fun practicing. Whereas hereto-