Hope was delighted. “I just know you’re going to be a real football hero, Jim,” she declared earnestly. “And I shall be too proud of you for words! And to-morrow I shall go and see you play.”
“You’ll do nothing of the sort,” responded Jim shortly. “If I’ve got to make a fool of myself I don’t intend to have the whole family watching me.”
Hope’s face fell. “But I may see you some day, mayn’t I? And I shall bring some of the girls from school with me. There’s one, Grace Andrews, whose brother plays on the High School team and she’s too sticky about it for anything. We play the High School Saturday, don’t we?”
“Yes.”
“Oh, I do hope they’ll let you play then, Jim! I’d love to have Grace Andrews see you.”
“Well, she won’t,” replied Jim grimly.[130] “I’ll be on the awkward squad for weeks, I suppose, and it’s a fair bet I never leave it. Besides, it seems to me your sympathy ought to be with your own school, sis.”
Hope considered that a moment. Then, “Well,” she sighed, “it’s a very difficult position I’m in. Of course I’m very fond of High School, Jim, but—but I think I’d rather have Crofton win; especially if you play. Wouldn’t that be just perfectly jimmy?”
“Fine! And maybe Duncan Sargent will retire and make me captain in his place,” added Jim ironically as he started upstairs to get ready for supper. “But, somehow, I don’t look for him to do it!”
After supper study was delayed in Sunnywood while Gil and Poke went over the football rules with Jim and did their best to elucidate them. Jeffrey was on hand too, and if it had not been for him I think Jim would have known less after the lesson than before, for Gil and Poke proved quite at variance as to the interpretation of half the rules and Jim was getting more and more confused when Jeffrey came to the rescue. Gil and Poke were hotly contradicting each other as to what invalidated a forward pass.
[131]
“I’ll leave it to Jeff if I’m not right,” declared Poke.
“Whereupon Jeffrey very quietly and understandingly explained Rule XIX in all its phases, while the others listened in respectful and admiring silence.
“I say,” exclaimed Poke when Jeffrey had finished, “you certainly know the rules, Senator. I’ll bet you you wrote them yourself!”
Jeffrey smilingly denied this but acknowledged that he always studied them very carefully each year, adding, “You see, I like to watch football mighty well, even if I can’t play it, and unless you know the rules of the game well enough to know just what’s being done all the time, and why, you don’t thoroughly enjoy it.”
“Well,” said Gil, “I guess you know them better than most of the fellows who play. I believe I’ll get a rule book and study up a little myself.”
“You wouldn’t understand them,” said Poke. “It takes a chap with a whole lot of brains to make head or tails of that stuff. Why, bless you, fellows, I was looking through a book of rules before I left home. Give you my word I tried the hardest I knew how to make out what[132] it was all about, and could I? I could—not! So I pitched the silly book in the waste-basket. And I wouldn’t be at all surprised to hear that the ashman found it and has gone crazy.”
“Well, that’s about all you need to know at first, Jim,” said Gil. “You’ll pick it up quick enough. The main thing is to know how to hold a ball so it won’t bite you, to kick a little, throw a little—”
“Won’t need to know that if he plays in the line,” said Poke. “If he can block and break through and help the runner—”
“Well, I guess I’ve had enough for to-night,” said Jim. “I guess I’d better pay a little attention to my lessons. Looked at your Latin yet, Jeff?”
“Yes, I’ve been over it once; it looks pretty easy.”
“For you perhaps,” replied Jim. “It won’t be for me, though.”
“Speaking of Latin,” said Gil, “something’s due to happen to Nancy Hanks pretty soon if he doesn’t brace up. They say J. G. is getting very much peeved at him. There was a peach of a rough house in history this morning, wasn’t there, Poke?”
“Lovely! But I’m sorry for Nancy, just the[133] same. Bull Gary makes me tired. He’s got half a dozen of the fellows trained now so that every time he starts something they all drop into line and poor Nancy’s life is a positive burden to him.”
“He shows it, too,” observed Jeffrey. “He’s getting to look as worried and nervous as—as a wet hen.”
“That’s so,” said Jim. “We’ve sort of let up on him in our classes. The fun wore off after awhile.”
“Because you haven’t any one in your bunch with the inventive genius of Mr. Gary,” said Poke. “Bull lies awake nights, I guess, thinking up new mischief. Somebody will just have to sit on him, Gil, and sit hard.”
“Yes, maybe. Still, perhaps, after all, Crofton isn’t just the place for Nancy. And if it isn’t he might as well make the discovery now as later. I guess he knows an awful lot, but I don’t believe he can teach it. And as for discipline, why, he doesn’t know the meaning of the word.”
“Oh, he knows what it means all right,” corrected Poke, “but he doesn’t know how to go to work to enforce it. I’ll bet you he never taught before in his life.”
[134]
“Then what’s he been doing all these years?” asked Jim.
“I think,” replied Jeffrey, “that he writes.”
“Writes? Writes what?” asked Poke.
“Books. The other day I passed his room when he happened to have left the door open—which doesn’t very often happen, as you know—and I saw a whole pile of paper on his desk and he was writing away like sixty with those tortoise-shell spectacles of his on.”
“Pshaw! Correcting papers, likely,” said Poke.
“They weren’t papers; they were sheets all written on just alike. I could see that easily.”
“Wonder what sort of books he writes,” murmured Jim.
“Oh, about Latin and history, probably,” said Poke. “Maybe they’re text-books. He doesn’t look quite such a criminal as that, either.”
“Well, whatever he writes,” remarked Gil, “it’s a safe bet he won’t be doing it here much longer.”
“Couldn’t we do something?” asked Jeffrey. “You see, after all, even if he is a member of the faculty, he—he’s one of us, you know, a Sunnywooder.”
[135]
“That’s so,” agreed Poke, “and we ought to stick together. I guess we’ll just have to read the riot act to Bull, Gil.”
Gil half-heartedly replied that he guessed something like that would have to be done and the conclave broke up, Jeffrey and Jim retiring across the hall to the former’s room in which Jim had formed the custom of studying.
The next afternoon he accompanied Gil and Poke to the gymnasium, rented a locker and struggled into his football togs which had grown strangely tight in the last year. Then, in the wake of half a hundred other fellows, they trotted down to the field and Jim sought Duncan Sargent. He found him conferring with Johnny and waited a few steps away until they finished talking. As it happened captain and coach were not telling secrets and so made no effort to talk quietly, and before Jim realized it he heard Sargent say:
“By the way, Johnny, I’ve got a new lineman coming out this afternoon; fellow named Hazard; big and rangy and looks good. Poke Endicott knows him and says he’s an all right player. I’ll hand him over to you and you give him a try with the second squad in scrimmage, will you? Let me know how he shapes up.”
[136]
“That’s good,” replied Johnny with enthusiasm. “We surely need better line material than we’ve got. There isn’t a promising substitute tackle in sight. Send him along to me and I’ll see what he can do.”
They strolled slowly away, still talking, leaving Jim a prey to varied emotions. He wanted to punch Poke for getting him into such a scrape. How could he go to Sargent now and say that it was all a mistake, that he really knew very little about the game and had only played as a sort of third or fourth substitute on his grammar school eleven? Why, it couldn’t be done! Rather than do that he would sneak back to the gymnasium, get his togs off and go home. He thought hard for a minute, while he followed the captain and trainer across the field. After all, he reflected presently, perhaps he could play fairly well if he had a chance. Why not accept the reputation that had been imposed upon him without his connivance and carry things off as best he could? After all, it wasn’t his fault, and if he disappointed them, why, he could get out. The situation required nerve and Jim had plenty of it when necessary. He smiled and made up his mind. They thought him an experienced player. Well, he would do his best to keep up[137] the delusion. Let them find out for themselves that he was little more than a tyro, a one-hundred-and-thirty-pound bluff in a suit that threatened to rip at the seams every time he stretched his muscles!
He quickened his gait and overtook Duncan Sargent.
“What shall I do, Captain?” he asked quietly.
“Eh? Hello, Hazard.” Sargent was so pleased that he shook hands and Jim’s conscience smote him for an instant. Sargent was such a dandy chap that it seemed a shame to impose on him. &ldquo............