The hockey game with Nordham that Saturday afternoon left a good deal to be desired in science and interest. In the first place, and I mention it as a mitigating circumstance, two days of mild weather had left the ice in very poor condition and good skating was out of the question. A half-inch of water lay over the surface and against the boards on the sunny side of the rink the ice was fairly rotten. Nordham presented a hard-working aggregation of talent, a team of lithe, well-trained youths who looked not only in the pink of condition but able for speed and skill as well. Toby viewed that contest from the bench, for, lacking Coach Loring’s prompting, Captain Crowell failed to so much as cock an eye at the substitute goal-tend. However, there was no necessity at any stage of the game for a relief for Frank Lamson. Frank had so little to do that he was palpably bored, since as poorly as Yardley played that day Nordham somehow managed to play far worse. Her forwards performed fairly well, considering an entire absence of team-play, but her defense was pitifully weak and Yardley, once past the center of the rink, had only to keep on her feet in order to score. Twelve tallies in the first period against two for Nordham, and seven more in the last to the visitor’s three was the outcome of the contest. The spectators hung over the barrier listlessly and almost went to sleep until, toward the end, when Crowell put in three substitute forwards and a substitute cover point, the contest became so much like a parody on hockey that they found amusement in making fun of the players.

If any particular member of either squad stood out prominently it was Arnold, for Arnold had a particularly good day and scored eight of the nineteen goals. Soft ice seemed to make less difference with his skating than with that of his fellow players, for he dashed up and down and in and out in a particularly startling manner. Nor did he lose the puck as the rest did. Even along the boards on the soft side of the rink he had perfect control over it. Toby, watching, was very proud of Arnold and almost forgot about controlling the temper when Simpson, beside him, remarked to his neighbor beyond that “Deering was making a fine play to the gallery!”

As an example of scientific hockey that game was a dismal failure, and as an afternoon’s amusement it was no more successful from the viewpoint of the audience. The latter turned away when the final whistle blew looking very much as though it thought it had wasted the better part of an hour and a half. Captain Crowell was a bit peevish afterwards, in the locker-room at the gymnasium, and was heard to speculate pessimistically on what was to happen three weeks later, finally observing that he guessed the only thing that would save Yardley from getting the hide licked off her was a thaw!

Somehow, Toby, wriggling out of his togs—which he might just as well have kept out of that day—couldn’t help thinking that if Mr. Loring had been on hand that afternoon that game would have been a heap more like hockey and less like a Donnybrook Fair. And also, he reflected, if Mr. Loring had been there one Tobias Tucker might have been allowed to take some slight part in the proceedings. With only three more games left on the schedule Toby’s chance of covering himself with glory and gaining the proud privilege of wearing the crossed hockey sticks on his sweater looked very slim. This thought, added to the load of gloom he was already carrying, was almost too much for him. He was rather miserable that evening.

Mr. Loring returned to Yardley on Tuesday morning, a fact made known to Toby when he appeared at the rink while Toby and Grover Beech were earnestly striving to get the better of each other. He looked on for a minute or two and then, after Beech had sprawled into the net and he and Toby were pulling it back into position, he climbed over the barrier and joined them.

“Try these on, Tucker,” he said, holding out a pair of goal-tender’s gloves of white buckskin. Toby, wondering, dropped his stick to the ice and tugged off the old woolen-lined glove from his right hand. “They may be too large for you,” continued Mr. Loring, “but I can have them changed. How do they seem?”

“Fine,” answered Toby, awedly, working his fingers luxuriously back and forth and feeling the soft, smooth leather give pliably to every motion. Beech, taking the other glove from Toby, admired it warmly.

“Gee, Mr. Loring, but those are dandy!” he said. “I’ll bet those cost something! See the open palm, Toby, and the peachy long cuffs on them. Are you going to wear them, sir?”

“Me? No, I got them for Tucker,” replied the coach. “Do they seem all right, Tucker?”

“Y-yes, sir, they—they’re wonderful, but I—I don’t think—” Toby was plainly embarrassed. “What I mean is,” he struggled on, “that they’re much too good, sir. You see, I can’t spend much on gloves.”

“They’re supposed to be a present,” replied Mr. Loring. “If you’re too haughty to accept a present—”

“Oh! No, sir, I’m not, but—but they’re a lot more expensive I guess, than they need be.”

“It doesn’t pay to buy cheap leather, my boy. Put on the other one and get used to them.”

“Yes, sir,” murmured Toby, flustered, trying to pick up his stick, accept the other glove from Beech and find words of thanks at the same moment, with the result that he fumbled stick, glove and speech! Beech chuckled, Mr. Loring smiled and Toby colored. “I—I’m most awfully much obliged,” the latter managed to enunciate at last. “I don’t know how to—to thank you, sir, and—”

“Never mind,” laughed the coach. “Actions speak louder than words, Tucker, and I should say that gratitude had simply overwhelmed you!”

Toby laughed too then and struggled into the second glove and smote them together and viewed them proudly, and Mr. Loring and Beech smiled understandingly at each other. After that, although Toby thought that he had utterly failed to meet the situation, the interrupted practice went on. To the amusement of the others, those new gloves quite upset Toby’s game and for a few minutes Beech scored goals almost as he liked. But that didn’t last and very soon the old struggle for mastery was on again in earnest and Mr. Loring, who had an engagement in the village at twelve and should have been on his way even then, enjoyed the contest so much that he stayed until Beech called a halt. Then he hurried off by the river path with the tails of his fur coat flapping ludicrously in the wind. Toby and Beech, treading the squeaky board-walk that led up the slope to the gymnasium, watched and chuckled. At least, Beech chuckled. Toby didn’t because nothing that Alfred Loring could do after that morning could ever seem ludicrous to him. He wondered if the coach had guessed that the reason he had no better gloves was because he hadn’t the money to buy them with, and concluded he had—and decided that he didn’t care. Mr. Loring was much too fine a gentleman to look down on a chap because he happened to be poor. Those gloves were not left in his locker in the gymnasium that day, but accompanied him into class room and commons, to be secretly felt of at intervals.

By that time Toby’s exchequer was slightly replenished and he decided that those gloves demanded a pair of leg-guards to go with them. He could buy the leg-guards if he used all his money except a few pennies and he determined to be reckless and get them. Not having Arnold to call on for advice and counsel, he sacrificed most of his dinner the next day, and hurried off to the village alone. As it turned out, Arnold’s advice wouldn’t have helped him a great deal, for there were but two styles of leg-guards to choose from at Fessenden’s, one cheap and unworthy the honor of being associated with those new gloves and the other expensive and wonderful. Toby unhesitatingly purchased a pair of the latter sort and counted out his money with a fine feeling of affluence. The only fly in his ointment was that he couldn’t put them on then and there and wear them home. Of course he could have done so, too, but he had a suspicion that the residents of Greenburg would stare. But he wore them that afternoon and gloried in the immaculate beauty of the white leather and felt uncomfortably conspicuous until he got interested in stopping the shots at goal and forgot them. They came up well above his knee and down over his ankle-bones, and there were no pesky leather straps punched with holes which were never in the right places. Instead, they were held in place by canvas strips which, once slipped through the clasps, stayed there immovably as long as you wanted them to and undid very easily. In those new white gloves and new white leg-guards Toby looked very fine that afternoon and managed to convey the impression that he was a real, sure-enough goal-tend! Perhaps Crowell was impressed, for he displayed more interest in Toby than he had since that first talk before Christmas recess. As usual, Toby played at the net in the second period of the practice game with the second, and, perhaps because he was trying to live up to his new togs, got away with a clean score, for not once did the second get the puck into the net. Mr. Loring smiled his satisfaction when Toby passed him on his way off the ice and said:

“Good work, Tucker. Keep it up.”

Toby went back to an hour’s study before supper feeling rather well pleased with himself, and had it not been for the falling-out with Arnold would have been a very happy youth that evening. As it was, however, even success on the rink couldn’t make him altogether content. He missed Arnold’s companionship horribly. What was the use of making a success of hockey if there was no one to talk it over with? He tried to think of some chap who could take Arnold’s place, but there didn’t seem to be any. He was friendly with quite a number of fellows now, but none of them were intimates. Grover Beech would talk hockey with him by the hour, but his interest paled the moment another subject was introduced. No, Toby could think of no one who would care to listen to his confidences. He got pretty lonely at times about now.

When he and Arnold met, Toby’s rather wistful glances went unseen or, being seen, met no response. Arnold always looked over him or past him, coldly and unforgivingly. There were times when Toby was tempted to humble himself, to offer any sort of apology or atonement in return for a re-establishment of their old friendship, but always at the last moment pride or embarrassment intervened. Subsequent to such periods of weakness Toby went to the opposite extreme and sullenly vowed that he would never have anything more to do with Arnold; no, sir, not even if Arnold begged him on his knees!

Arnold appeared strangely morose and crabbed those days. At table he was short-tempered and often uncivil. He and Gladwin almost came to blows one evening over a discussion of some perfectly trivial subject, and it finally got so that the others carefully left him alone. All, that is to say, except Homer Wilkins. Arnold’s perversities had no effect on Homer. If Arnold was cross, Homer merely assured him earnestly and good-temperedly that he hoped he would choke.

Oddly enough, Frank Lamson began to develop a sort of friendship for Toby. He seldom met him without stopping and talking. The conversation was never very important or very confidential, but Frank seemed to derive satisfaction from it. At first Toby was embarrassed, but after awhile he found himself quite ready to stop and chat. For one thing, Frank was near to Arnold and Toby could speak of the latter to him. One day—Frank had found Toby idly reading the notices on the bulletin board in the corridor of Oxford while awaiting a recitation—Frank observed:

“Say, Toby, what’s up between you and Arn? He seems to have a peach of a grouch about something, and I notice you don’t go around much together any more. What’s wrong, eh?”

“Oh, nothing,” answered Toby evasively. “What—what does Arn say?”

Frank shrugged. “Nothing. Just scowls. I thought you two were regular what-do-you-call-’ems—Damon and—what was the other chap’s name?”

“Pythias?”

“I guess so. What have you quarreled about?”

But Toby was silent, and Frank, amusing himself by running the end of a pencil across the radiator pipes, evoking a discordant result that appeared to give him much pleasure, went on: “Gee, you and he were so inseparable at Christmas time that I never saw Arn but once all during vacation, and that was Christmas morning when I went down to his room to leave a present.”

“That was an awfully pretty pin he gave you,” remarked Toby carelessly.

“What pin?” asked Frank in puzzled tones.

“The one I saw you wearing several times. It was a moonstone, wasn’t it?”

“That? Arn didn’t give me that. My mother did. Arn gave me a book. Forget the name of it now. It was pretty punk. I hate folks to give me books for Christmas, don’t you?”

“No, I like them,” replied Toby. There was, he thought, no reason why he should be so delighted at discovering that Arnold had not given Frank that scarf-pin, but delighted he was nevertheless, and his pleasure made him quite cordial and friendly toward Frank. “That was a dandy pin, and I was sure Arn had given it to you.”

“Well, he didn’t,” returned the other indifferently. “He gave me a silly book.” He chuckled. “He didn’t get anything on me, though, at that, for I gave him a half-dozen handkerchiefs! I’d rather get a book than handkerchiefs, eh?”

“A good deal rather!” laughed Toby. “Useful things like handkerchiefs and stockings and gloves are mighty nice to have, but you always feel as though folks ought to give you things that aren’t useful at Christmas, don’t you?”

“Absolutely! What did Arn give you, Toby?”

“A pair of gold cuff-links.”

“Fine!” Frank glanced down at Toby’s wrists. “Got ’em on?”

“No, I—they’re too dressy to wear every day.”

Frank grinned. “So peeved you won’t even wear his present, eh? Sic him, Prince! I dare say whatever the row is, it’s Arn’s fault. He’s a stubborn brute. I’ve known him for five or six years, I guess, and I know his tricks. Arn isn’t a bad sort, of course, but he’s mighty cranky sometimes. Well, he will get over it, Toby. Let him alone, eh?”

Toby made no response. He was wondering what Frank would say if he was told that he was the reason of the quarrel. Frank varied his performance on the radiator by tapping the coils and looked hurt when they all developed about the same notes.

“You know Tommy Lingard, don’t you?” asked Toby suddenly.

Frank nodded without looking up, continuing his hopeless search for music. “Yes, I know Tommy after a fashion. What about him?”

“Nothing. He said one time that he knew you pretty well.”

“He will say anything, the little rotter,” replied Frank cheerfully. “Tommy’s one of the finest little impromptu, catch-as-catch-can liars in school. Still, he managed to tell the truth for once. My folks know his folks at home. They live on the same street with us. His old man’s a nice old sort. Has a heap of money. Made it easy, too.”

“Did he?” asked Toby. “How?”

“Just by cutting-up.”

“Cutting-up? How do you mean?”

“He was a butcher,” laughed Frank. “I spring that one on Tommy when he gets too fresh. He’s a beast of a nuisance, that kid. Always wanting to borrow money from me. He has plenty of his own, but he spends it on candy and truck like that and is always broke. Well, here we go! What do you have this hour?”

“Math,” answered Toby. “Mr. McIntyre.”

“‘Kilts,’ eh? He’s a good old sort, ‘Kilts’ is. Well, so long. See you at practice.” Frank nodded, still a trifle condescendingly, and strolled off after one final hopeless tap on a steam coil, leaving Toby to gather his books and make his way down the corridor in the other direction. If, he pondered, young Lingard was really the liar that Frank dubbed him perhaps his story about getting that patched dollar from Frank was untruthful. On the other hand, though, Frank had said that Lingard was always trying to borrow money. And if that was so, why, what more probable than that Frank had loaned him some, as Lingard had stated? Well, he would probably never know the real truth of it. And, besides, he had agreed with himself to forget it. So there was no use speculating about it. But, just the same, he wished he knew! Somehow it wasn’t so easy to-day to believe in Frank’s guilt. And somehow revenging himself on Frank by beating him out for the position of goal-tend didn’t appeal to him nearly so much as it had a few days before. Of course the mere fact that Arnold hadn’t given Frank that scarf-pin proved nothing, but Toby got a lot of satisfaction from it!