es, and see what a
woebegone expression has settled there. Every time I glimpse at Sid and
Fred, I have to think of a funeral, or a famine."

"Yes, it must be a dreadful thing to have to actually starve yourself,
and all for the sake of getting in what they call condition," Mame Wells
remarked. "Why, for the first time in all his life, Sid has to get up
from the table before the dessert comes on. He says he just couldn't
stand for it to stay, and see us all enjoying ourselves while he's shut
out. Poor boy, I wish it was over for his sake."

"Why, they'll all be like walking skeletons if this keeps on much
longer," Flo Temple, the doctor's daughter, broke in with. "I even told
Fred he'd have to walk with a heavy cane, like an old man, before long,
and I offered him one of father's, but he must have felt ashamed to take
it, though I just know he wanted to."

"Oh! well," observed Corney Shay, slyly, "a heavy stick like that is a
mighty nice thing to have along with you, when you're coming home awful
late at night," and of course that caused a great laugh, as well as the
blushes to flash up in the cheeks of pretty Flo.

"But don't any of you try to pity us, and think we're suffering for want
of a decent meal," Fred told them. "Training table simply means that
you've got to drop pastry, and all such silly things as that. We eat
beefsteak and chops and eggs just as much as we want to, most vegetables,
fish and fruits, and even plain cake. Why, it's the finest thing a boy
can do, to try training for a month, and every fellow would be better off
for doing it."

"Then the daily runs we take, and the other exercise in the bargain,"
added Sid, "is making our flesh as hard as nails. Just feel that muscle,
will you?" and he flexed his arm as he held it out toward the gray-eyed
Cissie, who of course, after duly feeling of it, gave Sid a sly pinch
that made him jump.

Everybody knew that Fred and Flo were good chums, and were nearly always
together. It was that very fact that had made Buck Lemington dislike
Fred so much in the beginning. Buck had aspirations in that quarter
himself, and there had been a time, before the other boy came to town,
that he acted as escort to the doctor's pretty daughter, when they were
all much younger than now.

"I hear that the course has all been laid out at last," remarked a small
but lively high school boy, a cousin of Colon. He really had a first
name, though most people seemed to