Читать книгу Frank Merriwell's Setback; Or, True Pluck Welcomes Defeat онлайн

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As Jack Ready had boasted that he could beat Morgan in a mile race, and Dade had accepted the challenge, that was the first thing on the program.

“Oh, you can beat him!” Rosalind urged in the ear of her escort.

“Of course I can beat him!”

Dade made good his boast. Jack Ready had chirped of himself as a “winged wonder,” but Morgan beat him in at the finish more than twenty yards.

“Well, you see, it was this way,” Ready explained, stepping up to Rosalind as Dade moved to meet her. “I knew how you felt about it, and that took away my heart. No one can skate well with the wishes of a handsome young lady against him.”

“Oh, come off!” Morgan snarled. “I beat you fair and square, and you know it.”

Somehow, Morgan had never appreciated the humor of the fellow of the apple-red cheeks.

Ready wiggled his right hand in his bland way.

“There’s a fellow over there you can’t beat!”

“Who?”

“Dick Starbright.”

Rosalind’s dark face grew warm, for the words had been caught up by Dashleigh and some other of Dick’s friends.