The Grammar School Boys in Summer Athletics | Page 3

who gets in late has to take what's left."
"Are your folks so poor as that?" laughed Tom.
"Hardly," returned Harry. "But both dad and mother are sticklers for everyone being in his seat on time."
By this time five of the chums had started across the broad, sunny field toward the rather dusty road.
"Coming, Dave?" Dick called, looking back.
"Oh, yes," grunted Darrin. "But I hate to see all of you fellows running as though you didn't know whether you'd ever get another meal."
"I wonder what is Dave's sudden grouch against the eats," Tom mused aloud. "I've seen him at a few meals, and he was always a clever performer."
"Probably Dave has been eating too much for this time of the year, and has a touch of indigestion," Greg laughed.
Darrin overheard the discussion as he came along, but he did not choose to enlighten his friends. However, unintentionally, Greg had touched upon a part of the trouble. Dinner, that Sunday, at the Darrin cottage, had been unusually tempting, and Dave had eaten heavily. For that reason, when he had joined the crowd in the early afternoon, Dave had felt just a bit sluggish. The walk out into the country had roused his digestion a bit, and had left him in just that state where he could contentedly lie on the grass and doze half of the time.
On this bright Sunday all six of our Grammar School boys had attended church and Sunday school as usual. Then, the day being so fine, they had met and gone away on this tramp, which had ended in a "resting match" on the cool grass under the shade of trees.
All of our readers are familiar with these six fine American boys. Our readers were first introduced to Dick & Co., as Prescott and his chums were locally known, in the first volume in this series, "The Grammar School Boys Of Gridley." Therein the reader made the acquaintance of six average American boys of thirteen, and followed them through their sports and adventures---which latter were many and startling indeed.
In the second volume of the series, "The Grammar School Boys Snowbound," the same six were shown at winter sports just before Christmas. The detection, on Main Street, of a trio of Christmas shopping thieves led to a long chain of rousing adventures. Right after Christmas, Dick & Co., securing permission from their parents, went for a few days of forest camping in an old log cabin of which they had been given the use. Another phase of their adventure with the shopping district thieveries turned up in the woods and contributed greatly to the excitement of their experience. While still camping in the old, but weather-proof cabin, the Grammar School boys found themselves snowbound in one of the greatest blizzards that had happened in that section in years. Being hardy boys from much outdoor life, however, Dick & Co., as our readers know, turned hardship into jolly fun, and incidentally made a great discovery in the woods that turned their camping expedition into the local sensation of the hour. The reader also remembers how some of the poorer specimens of High School boys and a few local young "toughs," under the leadership of Fred Ripley and Bert Dodge, tried to drive them from their forest camp.
In the third volume of the series, "The Grammar School Boys In The Woods," Dick Prescott and his chums, each now fourteen years of age, found the most startling of all the exciting happenings that had been crowded into their short lives. How they came upon two dangerous, tattered specimens of humanity in the woods, how these two contrived to make Dick and Greg take unwilling part in an attempt to rob one of the local banks, the mystery of the haunted schoolhouse, and a host of other lively incidents---all these are so familiar to the reader of these volumes as to need no repetition. And Dick & Co., through the series of exciting adventures they had encountered, had become the best-known boys in and around the little city of Gridley. Being leaders of other boys, they had naturally made some enemies, but that is to be expected in the case of all who are born to lead, or who fit themselves for leadership.
And now, on this glorious June Sunday afternoon, we find our schoolboy friends enjoying the sacred day quietly, yet looking forward to the opening of the contests on the diamond between the three local Grammar Schools, the North, Central, and South Grammars.
The road they had chosen on this Sunday afternoon was one over which they had seldom traveled. It was not the road to Norton's Woods, to the great forest, nor yet the one that went by the "haunted schoolhouse." It was in a wholly different direction from Gridley.
"It's a long