Football affairs at Harvard went so smoothly that autumn, and promised so well that the local prophets were unanimous in declaring that “unless there came a slump at the critical moment” or “barring serious injuries to the players” or “if the present steady improvement in team-work continued,” Harvard would score a victory in the final game. A well-known authority (writing from New Haven), whose weekly articles were syndicated throughout the country, expressed the opinion—carefully hidden in a column and a half of close type—that, unless Yale played considerably better than her present performance promised, or Harvard failed to justify the hopes of her coaches, the contest would be an extremely close and interesting one, and that victory, by whoever won, would be well deserved.

At Cambridge, coaches and captain and trainer put on very lugubrious expressions whenever the ’varsity was mentioned, and scratched wood and[115] also muttered “unberufen” on even the slightest provocation.

John North was out on the field daily for the better part of two hours, dressed in togs that would have disgraced an old clothes man if found in his possession. His efforts were chiefly directed at the guards, and the way in which he seized those weighty players and pushed them about was beautiful to see. After a particularly hard afternoon’s practice he was ready to admit that coaching was stiffer work than being coached. And there were evening meetings which had a way of coming when most inconvenient, and at which he was expected to deliver terse homilies on breaking through and blocking and other artifices of the game. With it all he had little opportunity for cultivating the further acquaintance of Phillip and enacting the r?le of guardian to that youth. He told himself daily that he was derelict in his duty, and promised to find time the next day to look up his charge and salve his conscience. But his good resolutions came to naught. On Sunday evenings Phillip always showed up at his room, and the three, often reinforced by the presence of a visitor, spent a pleasant hour or two. David spoke of them as family gatherings[116] and dutifully kept awake until they had broken up. But John found that Phillip since the previous Sunday had undergone experiences and made friends quite on his own hook and was generally managing his affairs without recourse to the maturer advice of John or David or anybody else. So far, John was sure the boy had not “broken out of pasture,” as Corliss put it. Chester Baker and Guy Bassett and Everett Kingsford were all straightforward, healthy-minded fellows, than whom no better associates could have fallen to Phillip’s lot. But, as John told himself with compunction, that Phillip had been so fortunate in his choice of friends was due to no help of his. He had replied to Corliss’s letter and had promised to look after Phillip. And he hadn’t kept his promise, or, at least, not fully. And then there was Margaret! What would Margaret think of him if she knew how illy he was executing his trust? For some reason it was always the latter thought that troubled him most.

And so one day—it was during the first week in November; a leaden, cheerless afternoon, with a stinging wind blowing across Soldiers’ Field from the river—John came out of the locker building an hour earlier than usual and, with the sparks blowing[117] from his pipe-bowl, strode across the yellowing turf toward where, from the shelter of a little, iron-sheathed hut at the far end of the field, puffs of white smoke told that the Shooting Club were at practice. John nodded to several fellows he knew and found a sheltered corner. Phillip was shooting, a straight, wide-hipped, graceful figure in an old canvas coat, his battered Winchester shotgun, in noticeable contrast to the highly polished Scotts and Dalys that John saw about him, held easily before him.

“Ready!”

“Pull!”

A trap clicked and a Blue Rock quivered away to the left; there was a puff of smoke, a report and a little crackling sound as the clay disk broke into fragments. Another trap was sprung and again the butt was swung easily against the shoulder and once more the speeding bird fell in fragments. The left-hand trap sprang a broken disk, but Phillip, amidst the laughter of the watchers, chose the largest portion and sent it swerving out of its track.

“No bird,” called the scorer, and on the next try, a mean flight at a wide angle, he again scored a hit.

[118]

“Rather a good shot, isn’t he?” asked John of a neighbour.

“A peach! He’s better than usual to-day; hasn’t made a miss yet. His name’s Ryerson and he comes from Virginia. I fancy he’s done a lot of quail shooting; there’s nothing like that to give you an eye, you know.”

Phillip broke his gun, blew through the barrel and stepped back to the hut, looking quite as sober as though he had missed every bird. “He’s coming on,” thought John. “The ability to disguise your satisfaction at a deed well done seems to be one of the first lessons we teach at college nowadays.” He nodded to Phillip and the latter joined him.

“Hello,” he said. “Have they discharged you from the board of coaches?”

“No,” replied John; “but I got through early and thought I’d come over and see you shoot. They tell me you’re quite a dab at it.”

“Oh, well, I manage to hit them now and then. Of course, the captain there is our star. We’re about through. If you’ll wait I’ll walk back with you.”

John waited and they tramped back to the square in the teeth of the November gale, loitering a minute[119] or two on the porch of the Weld Club house to watch one of the crews disembark—eight glowing, water-drenched young giants and a shrill-voiced, imperative wisp of a coxswain. Phillip accompanied John to his room and they had a restful smoke in the gathering darkness, their feet well up and their heads well back, with the subdued clanging of the cars on the avenue and the rattling of the casements under the assaults of the wind for an accompaniment to their lazy conversation.

“Larry Baker told me you were round to see him the other night,” said John.

“Yes; I really didn’t want to go. I thought maybe he’d think I was cheeky. But he didn’t seem to mind; in fact, he was right nice to me.”

“Why should he mind? This thing of each class huddling to itself like a lot of chickens in a rainstorm is all poppycock, Phil. We’re all in the same boat; we’re all Harvard men. What earthly difference does it make whether a chap is a first year man or a fourth? Why shouldn’t I take my friends from the freshmen or sophomores if I can find them there? If there were more coalescence between the upper classes and the lower it would be a darned sight better, I think.”

[120]

“I reckon it would be better for the lower men,” laughed Phillip, “but it might be a bit of a bore to the upper. We freshies are a kiddish lot, you know—that is, most of us. Some aren’t. There’s Guy Bassett. He seems more like a fellow of twenty-five or six than a freshman, he’s so kind of serious and—and smart.”

“I’ve heard of Bassett,” yawned John. “Came from Exeter. I believe he’s about twenty. His folks sent him to school when he was fourteen and he stayed there until Christmas, and then disappeared from human ken for the space of eighteen months or so. When they heard from him next he was in Melbourne, having, I think, gone pretty well around two sides of the globe on a schooner. At least, that’s the yarn Larry Baker tells.”

“Really? I’d never heard that,” answered Phillip. “I reckon that accounts for his seeming so old and—experienced.”

“I daresay. What kind of a chap is he now? Quiet or—er—up to things?”

“Oh, quiet, I’d call him. He plays football, you know. He’s on the freshman second, and I reckon he’ll make the first before the Yale game. Yes, he[121] seems quiet enough. He rooms with a fellow named Boerick—an awful beast.”

“Yes, I’ve met Boerick,” laughed John. “This is his second year as a freshie. He is a beast, isn’t he? Awful cad. His father has gobs of money; made it in the clothing business in New York. You can see his ads. any old day in the papers: ‘Now then, how about a new overcoat for winter? Getting chilly, isn’t it? Have you seen our nobby Newmarkets in English worsteds? We like them ourselves; maybe you would if you saw them. Only thing is, when they’re gone—and they’re going fast—there won’t be any more. A word to the wise!’ That’s the style, you know; that beastly familiar style that always makes me want to kick somebody.”

Phillip laughed.

“Talking of clothing,” he said presently, “I’ve had some new things made, and they’ve cost an awful lot of money. I didn’t know things were so high.”

“It’s a way they have hereabouts,” answered John. “If you want to get anything at a reasonable price the best plan is to make affidavit that you’re a car conductor or a coal-heaver or something of that sort; anything save a Harvard student. The shopkeepers[122] think we’re fair game for anything. Try it next time, Phil.”

“I reckon there won’t be any next time,” answered Phillip ruefully; “at any rate, not for a good while. Fact is, I’m pretty well cleaned out.”

“Yes? I presume what Davy calls ‘boarding and baiting’ is costing more than you thought it would?”

“N—no; it’s—it’s the other things, you see: clothes and belonging to things, like the Shooting Club, and—— Oh, I don’t know; there’s always something!”

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