The Project Gutenberg eBook, Full-Back Foster, by Ralph Henry Barbour, Illustrated by E. C. Caswell

FULL-BACK FOSTER

[He felt that he was being discussed]

FULL-BACK FOSTER

BY

RALPH HENRY BARBOUR

AUTHOR OF

LEFT END EDWARDS,
LEFT GUARD GILBERT, Etc.

ILLUSTRATED BY

E. C. CASWELL

GROSSET & DUNLAP

PUBLISHERS NEW YORK

Copyright, 1919

By DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY, Inc.

CONTENTS

ILLUSTRATIONS

FULL-BACK FOSTER

[CHAPTER I]
MYRON ARRIVES

His name was Myron Warrenton Foster, and he came from Port Foster, Delaware. In age he was seventeen, but he looked more. He was large for his years, but, since he was well proportioned, the fact was not immediately apparent. What did strike you at once were good looks, good health and an air of well-being. The pleasing impression made by the boy’s features was, however, somewhat marred by an expression of self-satisfaction, and it may be that the straight, well-knit figure carried itself with an air of surety that was almost complacent. So, at least, thought one who witnessed Myron’s descent from the New York train that September afternoon.

“There’s a promising-looking chap,” said Jud Mellen, “but he somehow gives you the impression that he’s bought Warne and has come down to look the town over.”

Harry Cater laughed as he picked his trunk check from a handful of coins. “Lots of ’em look that way when they first arrive, Jud. I’m not sure you didn’t yourself,” he added slyly.

“If I did, I soon got over it.” The football captain smiled drily, his gaze following the subject of their remarks. “Just as I suspected,” he continued. “It’s a taxi for his. Four blocks is too far for the poor frail lad.”

“Oh, come, Jud, be fair. Maybe he doesn’t know whether the school’s four blocks or forty. Besides, he’s much too beautifully got up to tramp it. He might get dust on that corking suit of his.”

“It is rather a good-looking outfit, and that’s a fact. Maybe if I was dolled up like that I’d want to ride, too. Well, come on, Katie, and let’s get up there. Practice is at three, and you’ve got only about forty minutes to find yourself in.”

Harry Cater, or “Katie,” as he was known at Parkinson School, had been more charitable than correct in assuming that the new boy was uncertain of the distance between station and school, for the catalogue had definitely said four blocks. But had the distance been two short blocks instead of four long ones it is unlikely that Myron Foster would have walked. Not that he had anything against walking; he recognised it as a healthful and beneficial form of exercise, as well as a pleasant occupation under some circumstances; but he was used to patronising automobiles when it was necessary to get from one place to another. At home there were two cars usually at his service, and when he was away from home a taxi-cab served as well. He couldn’t remember when walking had been a necessity, for prior to the autos there had been carriages, and before the carriages—which had included a pony-cart for his especial use—there had been an English perambulator with easy springs and shining varnished leather top; and beyond that his memory didn’t go.

The vehicle that Myron found himself in brought a smile of amused disdain to his face. It was cheap and small and none too clean, and it made more noise as it whisked over the cobbles than a boiler works. However, when it crossed Adams Street and reached the asphalt it quieted down considerably and its occupant was able to obtain a rather more distinct impression of the little town that was to have the honour of being his place of residence for the ensuing nine months. He rather liked what he could see of it, especially when, having bumped across the trolley tracks on Main Street, he found himself in what was evidently the residential part of Warne. The shops had given way to neat, sometimes rather showy, dwellings on his right, set behind picket fences or lilac hedges, the latter looking sere and frowsy after a hot summer. On his left was a quaint, century-old burying ground in which mossy slate slabs leaned precariously under the cool, deep shadows of giant elms and maples. The church beyond, with its unlovely square steeple, peered through the trees in friendly fashion at the newcomer. At the next intersection the boy caught a glimpse of the inscription “Washington Ave.” on a signboard, and in the next moment had his first view of the school. To his left the campus stretched for two long blocks, a level oblong of green turf intersected by gravel paths and shaded by linden trees. Beyond the campus the school buildings ran in a straight line, or, to be exact, five of them did; there were several others out of position, so to speak, among them that to which he was being whisked. From Maple Street the taxi bounded on two wheels around a corner into a gravelled avenue, past the little brick Administration Building, turned again by the gymnasium and a moment later brought up with a squeaking of brakes in front of Sohmer Hall.

Sohmer was the most recent addition to the dormitories, and the most luxurious. Although it followed the architectural style of the others and, at first glance, looked quite as old and quite as New England, it nevertheless possessed modifications that stood for a convenience and comfort that the other dormitories lacked. The driver of the taxi, a sandy-haired, gum-chewing young man with the cheap air of a village “sport,” looked disdain as Myron pointed to the brown leather kit-bag and remarked carelessly: “You might just fetch that along.”

“Sure!” jeered the driver, pushing back a battered straw imitation of a Panama hat from his heated brow and grinning widely. “And maybe you’d like me to unpack it for you, kid, and hang up your things? I ain’t got nothing else to do, and a quarter’s a lot of money, and——”

“I haven’t asked you what I owed yet, have I?” said Myron. “If carrying that bag is worth another quarter why not carry it and get the money? I dare say I can scrape up a half somehow!”

“Oh, whyn’t you say so?” muttered the other. “How’d I know you was John D. Vanderbilt? Where’s it going?”

“Number 17, wherever that is. Second floor, I think.”

“Most of you guys,” continued the driver affably as he led the way up the slate stairway, “expects us to lug trunks and everything and don’t want to slip us anything extra. Nothing doing! I’m willing to be obliging, see, but I ain’t in business for my health, mister. Here you are, sir. Number 17, you said? Door’s unlocked. Gee, some room, ain’t it? What about your trunk, sir? Want me to fetch it for you?”

“No, it’s coming by express. That’s all, thanks. Here you are. There’s a quarter for the ride, a quarter for the bag and a quarter for a tip. All right?”

“Sure! You’re a real gentleman, mister. Say, any time you want a taxi or—or anything, see, you send for me. Name’s Eddie Moses. Telephone to Benton’s cigar store and they’ll give me the call.”

“All right, Eddie. All doors open out.”

“That so? Oh, all right. You can be sassy with me any time you like for a quarter!” And Mr. Eddie Moses, chuckling at his wit, took himself away, leaving Myron at leisure to look around his quarters.

Number 17 Sohmer consisted of two rooms, a good-sized square study and a sleeping room off it. The study windows—there were two of them—overlooked the campus, although this afternoon, since the lindens still held their leaves, the view was restricted to so much of the campus as lay between the hall and the path that stretched from the gymnasium to the main gate on Washington Avenue. The bedroom also had a window with a similar outlook. This apartment was only large enough to hold the two single beds, the two chiffoniers and the two straight-backed chairs constituting its furnishing, and Myron soon turned back from the doorway and removed his gaze to the study again. There were, he decided, possibilities in the study. Of course he would get rid of the present junk, but it must serve until his furniture came from home, which ought to be in another three or four days. It had been his mother’s idea to ship the things from his grey and yellow room at Warrenton Hall. She thought Myron would be less homesick if surrounded by the familiar objects of home. Myron’s own idea had been to purchase a new outfit in Philadelphia, but when he had seen how set his mother had been on her plan he had not insisted. The only thing that troubled him now was that, recalling the number and generous proportions of the articles on the way, he feared the study would be far too small to hold them! Why, his couch alone would take up almost all of the end of the room where the windows were! Well, he would just have to use what he could and store the other things somewhere: or send them home again.

He had tossed his hat on the stained table that occupied the centre of the study—in shape that hat was not unlike the one worn by Eddie Moses, but all similarity ended right there—and now he removed his jacket of steel-grey, serge-like material, rolled up the sleeves of a pale yellow silk shirt and passed into the bedroom to wash. It may be well to state in passing that Myron affected grey and yellow, both in his room furnishings and in his attire. It was a conceit of Mrs. Foster’s. She was fond of colour combinations and, could she have had her way, would have prescribed for every member of her household. But Myron was the only one who consented to be guided by her taste. He didn’t care a rap whether his wallpaper was grey with yellow stripes or purple with pink daisies, only, having been told that grey-and-yellow suited him wonderfully he accepted it as a fact, said that it “looked all right, he supposed,” and was soon a willing slave to the grey-and-yellow habit. Mrs. Foster’s attempt to persuade her husband to pin his taste to brown-and-lilac, however, was a wretched failure. Mr. Foster snorted disgustedly and went right on buying green and magenta neckties and socks that made his wife shudder.

Having washed his hands and face and dried them on a handkerchief—a soft, pure-linen affair with a monogram worked in one corner in grey and yellow—Myron opened his kit-bag and unpacked, stowing the things neatly and systematically in one of the chiffoniers. He would, he reflected, get them to take the other chiffonier and the other bed out. As he was to occupy Number 17 alone there was no need of them. When the bag was unpacked and set in a corner of the closet he donned his jacket again and strolled to a window. The campus was livening up. Although the foliage hid the other buildings very effectually he could hear the patter of feet on gravel and steps, voices in shouts or laughter and, from somewhere, the tuning of a banjo. As he looked down, leaning from the sill, two lads came across the grass and paused a little further along under a window. They were in flannels, and one carried a racket. They tilted their heads and hailed:

“O Jimmy! Jimmy Lynde! He-e-ey, Jimmy! Jimmy-y-y!”

After a moment a voice answered from a neighbouring window: “Hello, Gus, you old rascal! ’Lo, Petey! How’s everything?”

“Lovely. Come and have a game. Channing’s over there, and he and Pete’ll play you and me. Huh? Oh, forget it! There’s oodles of time for that. All right, hustle along. We’ll go on over. Get a move on!”

The two waved and turned toward the gymnasium. Myron felt a trifle lonesome when they had gone, for it came to him that he was a stranger in a strange land. He wondered how long it would be before fellows stopped under his window and called to him. It probably didn’t take long to get acquainted, he decided, but still he sort of wished he knew at least one of his school-fellows as a starter. Perhaps, after all, it would have been nicer to have had a room-mate. Personally, he hadn’t cared much one way or the other, but his mother had exclaimed in horror at the idea of his sharing his room with a strange boy. “Why, you can’t tell what sort of a person he might be, Myron dear,” she had protested. “Of course we know that Parkinson is one of the nicest schools and that some of the very best people send their sons there, but nowadays it’s quite impossible to keep the wrong sort out of anywhere. It would be awful if you found yourself with some dreadful low kind of boy.” So Myron had said, “Oh, all right, Mater,” and dismissed the notion. And maybe she was right, too, for it would be a frightful bore to have to live in such close quarters with some “roughneck.” On the whole he guessed he was better off alone, even if he did feel rather lonely for a few days.

He recalled the fact that he hadn’t yet registered at the Office, or wherever you did register, but he had until six to do that, and a glance at a handsome thin-case gold watch showed that the time was still short of three. But it was dull up here, and stuffy, too, and he guessed he’d go down and look the place over. As he turned from his window he became aware of the fact that the dormitory was no longer quiet. Doors opened and closed, feet shuffled on the stairs and there were sounds of talking and singing and whistling. It certainly sounded more cheerful, he thought. The taxi driver had closed the door behind him, and now Myron started across the study to open it. Maybe if it was open some one might see him and drop in. He put his hat back on the table, deciding not to go out just yet. As he reached his hand toward the doorknob there were sounds of heavy footsteps outside. Then something thumped against the door, a voice muttered——

Myron pulled the portal open. Framed in the doorway stood a veritable giant of a boy, a battered valise in each hand, a ragged-edged stiff straw hat tilted far back from his perspiring countenance and a none too clean handkerchief dangling from inside a wilted collar.

“Atta boy!” said the stranger genially, and then, to Myron’s amazement, he piled into the study, fairly sweeping the other aside, dropped his bags with mighty thuds on the floor and mopped his broad face with the dangling handkerchief. “Geewhillikins, but that’s some tote, kiddo!” he observed with an all-encompassing grin. “I’m sweating like a horse!”

“It is warm,” replied Myron in a voice that was quite otherwise. “But haven’t you—er—made a mistake?”

“Watyer mean, mistake?” asked the other, puzzled.

“In the room. This is seventeen.”

“Sure! That’s all right. I just came from the Office. That Hoyt guy said seventeen. And, say, kiddo, it’s some swell dive, ain’t it? Guess you and I are lucky guys, all right, to get it, eh?”

[CHAPTER II]
SO DOES JOE DOBBINS

Myron didn’t know who “that Hoyt guy” might be, but he was sure that he or some one else had made a horrible mistake. Why, this big, good-natured, badly-dressed boy was the roughest sort of a “roughneck,” the identical type, doubtless, that his mother had spoken of so distastefully! Myron viewed him during a moment of silence, at a loss for words. The newcomer had removed his tattered hat and was now struggling with a jacket that, far too tight in the sleeves, parted reluctantly from the moist garments beneath. But it came off finally and the boy tossed it carelessly to a chair and stretched a pair of long arms luxuriously ere he sank onto it. “That train was like a furnace all the way, and the ice-water gave out at Hartford,” he said. “Well, here we are, though. What’s your name? Mine’s Dobbins; Joe Dobbins, only they generally call me ‘Whoa.’”

“My name is Foster,” replied Myron rather weakly.

“Foster, eh? That’s all right. I know a fellow at home name of Foster. Drives for Gandell and Frye. They’re the big dry-goods folks. He’s an all-right guy, too, Sam is. He and I used to be pretty thick before I came away. Were you here last year, Foster?”

“No, I—this is my first year.”

“What class?”

“Third, I expect.”

“Same here. I’m new, too. I was at St. Michael’s last year, until April. I beat it then. Got in wrong with faculty, you know.” He smiled and winked. “Great little school, St. Michael’s, but sort of narrow. My old man said he guessed I needed more elbow-room. So I thought I’d try this place. Looks all right so far; sort of pretty: plenty of trees. I like trees. Grew up with ’em. Maybe that’s why. Dad made his money out of trees.”

“Indeed?” responded Myron, coldly polite. “Lumber, I suppose.”

“Wrong, kiddo. Spruce gum.”

“Oh!”

“Maybe you’ve heard of him: Tom Dobbins: the Spruce Gum King, some call him.”

Myron shook his head. For some absurd reason he felt slightly apologetic, and was angry with himself for it.

“No? Well, I guess you don’t come from my part of the country. Portland, Maine’s my home. We’ve been living there six or seven years. I missed the woods at first a heap, let me tell you. Why, we used to live right in ’em: big trees all around: no town nearer than six miles. I was born there, in a log house. So were my three sisters. Them was the happy days, as the guy says.”

“Very—very interesting, I’m sure,” said Myron, “but about this room, Dobbins: You’re quite certain that they told you Number 17?”

“Sure! Why not? What’s wrong with it?” Dobbins gazed questioningly about the study and then leaned forward to peer through the open door of the bedroom. “Looks all right. Plumbing out o’ order, or something? Any one had smallpox here? What’s the idea?”

“The idea,” replied Myron a bit haughtily, “is that I am supposed to have this suite to myself. I particularly asked for a single suite. In fact, I am paying for one. So I presume that either you or I have made a mistake.”

Dobbins whistled. Then he laughed enjoyably. Myron thought it was a particularly unpleasant laugh. “Say, that’s rich, ain’t it?” asked Dobbins finally. “No wonder you were sort of stand-offish, kiddo! Gee, it’s a wonder you didn’t biff me a couple and throw me out on my bean! I’ll say it is! Butting in on your—er—privacy, like, eh? Say, I’m sure that Hoyt guy said seventeen, but he may have got his wires crossed. I’ll mosey over and——”

“Don’t bother. I haven’t registered yet. I’ll straighten it out. Maybe he meant one of the other halls.”

“Might be,” said Dobbins doubtfully, “but he sure said Sohmer. This is Sohmer, ain’t it?”

“Yes. Well, I’ll find out about it. Meanwhile you might just—er—wait.”

“Got you, kiddo. I’ll come along, though, if you say so. I don’t mind. I’m fine and cool now. Maybe I’d better, eh?”

“No, no,” replied Myron quickly. “You stay here.” He repressed a shudder at the thought of being seen walking into the Administration Building with Dobbins! For fear that the latter would insist on accompanying him, he seized his hat and fairly bolted, leaving the intruder in possession of the disputed premises.

The Administration Building was but a few rods away, and Myron, nursing his indignation, was soon there. But it was evident that he would have to wait a considerable time, for the space outside the railing that divided the secretary’s office in half was well filled with returning students. There was nothing for Myron to do save take his place in the line that wound from the secretary’s desk across the room and back again. But the official, in spite of a nervous manner, handled the registrations efficiently, and after fifteen minutes or so, during which he was annoyedly aware of the amused stares and whisperings of a couple of fourth class youngsters, Myron’s turn came. He gave his name and answered the questions and then, when the secretary waved him on, “There’s been a mistake made about my room, sir,” he said. “I engaged a single suite nearly two months ago and you wrote that I was to have Number 17 Sohmer. Now I find that you’ve put another fellow in with me, a fellow named Dobbin or Dobbins.”

The secretary rescued the card that he had a moment before consigned to the index at his elbow and glanced quickly over it. “Oh, yes,” he answered. “I recall it now. But I wrote to your father several days ago explaining that owing to the unexpectedly large number of students this year we’d be unable to give you a study to yourself. Possibly you left before the letter reached your home in—ah, yes,—Port Foster, Delaware. The school catalogue states distinctly that rooms are rented singly only when circumstances permit. The suite assigned you is a double one and we have had to fill it. Very sorry, Mr. Foster, but perhaps you will find it an advantage to have a companion with you.”

“But my father is paying for a single room——”

“That has been arranged. One-half of the first term rental has been refunded. That is all, Mr. Foster?”

“Why—why, I suppose so, but I don’t like it, sir. You agreed to give me a room to myself. If I had known how it was to be, I—I think I’d have gone somewhere else!”

“Well, we’d be sorry to lose you, of course,” replied the secretary politely, “but unfortunately there is no way of giving you the accommodations you want. If you care to communicate with your father by wire we will hold your registration open until the morning. Now I shall have to ask you to let the next young gentleman——”

“I guess you’d better do that,” replied Myron haughtily. “I’ll telegraph my father right away.”

The secretary nodded, already busy with the next youth, and Myron made his way out. As he went down the worn stone steps he saw the two fourth class boys adorning the top rail of the fence that bordered Maple Street, and as he passed them he heard a snicker and a voice asking “Isn’t he a dur-ream?” His first angry impulse was to turn back and scold, but second thoughts sent him on with an expression of contemptuous indifference. But the incident did not sweeten his disposition any, and when he strode into Number 17 again it needed only the sight that met him to set him off. Joe Dobbins, minus coat and vest, his suspenders hanging, was sitting in the room’s one easy chair with his stockinged feet on the table. Myron, closing the door behind him, glared for an instant. Then:

“What do you think this is, Dobbin?” he demanded angrily. “A—a stable?”

Dobbins’ jaw dropped and he viewed Myron with ludicrous surprise. “How do you mean, a stable?” he asked.

“I mean that if you’re going to stay here with me tonight you’ve got to act like a—a gentleman! Sitting around with your suspenders down and your shoes off and your feet on the table——”

“Oh!” said Joe, in vast relief. “That’s it! I thought maybe you were going to crack some joke about me being a horse, on account of my name. Don’t gentlemen put their feet on the table and let their galluses down?”

“No, they don’t!” snapped Myron. “And as long as you’re rooming with me—which I hope won’t be long—I’ll ask you to cut out that ‘roughneck’ stuff.”

“Sure,” grinned Joe. “Anything to oblige, Foster.” He had already dropped his feet, and now he drew his suspenders over his shoulders again and slipped his feet back into his shoes. “Don’t guess I’ll ever get on to the ways of the best circles, Foster. I’m what you call an Unspoiled Child of Nature. Well, what did the guy in the Office say? I’m betting I was right, kiddo.”

“And don’t call me ‘kiddo’! You know my name. Use it.”

“Gosh-all-hemlock!” murmured the other. “Say, you must have one of those fiery Southern temperaments I’ve read about. Now I know how the Civil War happened. I’ll bet you’re a direct descendant of General Lee!”

“I’m not a Southerner,” answered Myron. “Just where do you think Delaware is?”

“Well, I didn’t know you hailed from there,” replied Joe untroubledly, “but I’d say Delaware was sort of Southern. Ain’t it?”

“No more than Maine. Look here, Dobbin——”

“Dobbins, please; with an S.”

“Dobbins, then,” continued Myron impatiently. “That fellow over there says the school’s so full I can’t have a room to myself. They promised me I could two months ago, and we’ve paid for one. Well, I’m going to get out and go somewhere where—where they know how to treat you. But—but I can’t leave until tomorrow, so we’ll have to share this place tonight.”

“That’ll be all right,” replied Joe affably. “I don’t mind.”

Myron stared. “I didn’t suppose you did,” he said.

“Meaning you do, eh?” Joe laughed good-naturedly. “That it?”

“I’m not used to sharing my room with others,” answered Myron stiffly. “And I’m afraid you and I haven’t very much in common. So I guess we’ll get on better if—if we keep to ourselves.”

“All right, kiddo—I mean Foster. Anything for a quiet life! Suppose we draw a line down the middle of the room, eh? Got a piece of chalk or something?”

“I’ve taken the chiffonier nearest the window,” said Myron, disregarding the levity. “But I’ll have my things out in the morning, in case you prefer it to the other.”

“Chiff—Oh, you mean the skinny bureau? Doesn’t make any difference to me which I have, ki—Foster. Say, you don’t really mean that you’re going to leave Parkinson just because you can’t have a room to yourself, do you?”

“I do. I’m going out now to send a wire to my father.”

“Gee, I wouldn’t do that, honest! Why, say, maybe I can find a room somewhere else. I don’t mind. This place is too elegant for me, anyway. Better let me have a talk with that guy over there before you do anything rash, Foster. I’m sorry I upset your arrangements like this, but it isn’t really my fault; now is it?”

“I suppose not,” replied Myron grudgingly. “But I don’t believe you can do anything with him. Still, if you don’t mind trying, I’ll put off sending that telegram until you get back.”

“Atta boy! Where’s my coat? Just you sit tight till I tell that guy where he gets off. Be right back, kiddo!”

Joe Dobbins banged the door behind him and stamped away down the corridor. Pending his return, Myron found a piece of paper, drew his silver pencil from his pocket and frowningly set about the composition of that telegram. Possibly, he thought, it would be better to address it to his mother. Of the two, she was more likely to recognise the enormity of the offence committed by the school. Still, she would see it in any case if he addressed it to the house and not to the office. When it was done, after several erasures, it read:

“Mr. John W. Foster, Warrenton Hall, Port Foster, Del.

“Arrived safely, but find that I cannot have room to myself as was agreed. Must share suite with impossible fellow named Dobbins. Prefer some other school. Not too late if you wire tonight. Love. Myron.”

Putting Dobbins’ name into the message was, he considered, quite a masterly stroke. He imagined his mother’s expression when she read it!

[CHAPTER III]
THE “IMPOSSIBLE FELLOW”

Dobbins was gone the better part of half an hour and when he finally returned his expression showed that he had met with failure. “Still,” he explained hopefully, “Hoyt says he will give me the first vacancy that turns up. Sometimes fellows have to drop out after school begins, he says. Fail at exams or something. He says maybe he can put me somewhere else within a week. Mind you, he doesn’t promise, but I made a pretty good yarn of it, and I guess he will do it if he possibly can.” Joe Dobbins chuckled reminiscently. “I told him that if he didn’t separate us I wouldn’t answer for what happened. Said we’d already had two fights and were spoiling for another. Said you’d pitched my things out the window and that I’d torn up all your yellow neckties. Maybe he didn’t believe all I told him: he’s a foxy little guy: but I guess I got him thinkin’, all right!”

“You needn’t have told him all that nonsense,” demurred Myron. “He will think I’m a—a——”

“Not for a minute! I told him you were a perfect gentleman. Incompatibility of temperament is what I called it. He said why didn’t I leave off the last two syllables. Well, that’s that, kiddo—I mean Foster. Better leave it lay until we see what happens, eh?”

“Not at all. I shall send this telegram, Dobbins. I don’t believe he has any idea of—of doing anything about it.”

“We-ell, you’re the doctor, but—Say, where’ll you go if you leave this place?”

“I don’t know yet. There are plenty of other schools around here, though. There’s one up the line a ways. I think it’s called Kenwood. Or there’s——”

“Kenwood? Gee, boy, you don’t want to go there! Don’t you read the crime column in the papers? Why, Kenwood is filled with thugs and hoboes and the scum of the earth. A feller on the train told me so coming down here. Parkinson and Kenwood are rivals: get it? You don’t want to throw down this place and take up with the enemy, eh?”

“I don’t see what that has to do with it,” Myron objected. “I’m not a Parkinson fellow. And I dare say that Kenwood is quite as good a school as Parkinson.”

But Joe Dobbins shook his head. “That feller on the train talked mighty straight. I wouldn’t like to think he was lying to me. He said that Kenwood was—was—now what was it he said? Oh, I got it! He said it was an ‘asylum for the mentally deficient.’ Sounds bad, eh?”

“Rot!” grunted Myron. “I’m going over to the telegraph office.”

“All right. If the Big Boss drops in I’ll tell him.”

When Myron had gone Joe promptly removed coat and vest once more, dropped his suspenders about his hips and kicked off his shoes. “Might as well be comfortable when His Majesty’s away,” he sighed. “Gee, but he’s the limit, now ain’t he? I suppose I ought to have spanked him when he called me a stable—or whatever it was. But I dunno, he’s sort of a classy guy. Guess he isn’t so worse if you hack into him. Bark’s a little punk, but the wood’s all right underneath, likely. Don’t know if I could stand living with him regular, though. Not much fun in life if you can’t slip your shoes off when your feet hurt. Well, I guess I’ll get these satchels emptied. What was it he called those bureaus, now? Chiff—chiff—I’ll have to get him to tell me that again. One thing, Joey: living with Mr. Foster’ll teach you manners. Only I’d hate to think I’d ever get to wearing a lemon-yellow necktie!”

Still feeling deeply wronged and out-of-sorts, Myron made his way back to Maple Street and set out toward the business part of Warne. The breeze that had made the late September afternoon fairly comfortable had died away and the maples that lined the broad, pleasant thoroughfare drooped their leaves listlessly and the asphalt radiated heat. Myron wished that he had shed his waistcoat in the room. Students were still arriving, for he passed a number on their way to the school, bags in hands, and several taxis and tumble-down carriages went by with hilarious occupants oozing forth from doors and windows. One of the taxi drivers honked brazenly as his clattering vehicle passed Myron and the latter glanced up in time to receive a flatteringly friendly wave and shout from Eddie Moses. Myron frowned. “Folks here are a lot of savages,” he muttered.

The telegram despatched, he made his way to a nearby drug store, seated himself on a stool and asked for a “peach-and-cream.” The freckle-faced, lanky youth behind the counter shook his head sadly. “Ain’t got no peach today. I can give you vanilla, chocolate, strawberry, rasp——”

“I didn’t mean syrup. Haven’t you any fruit? I want a peach-and-cream.”

“Don’t know what that is. Anyway, we ain’t got it. How about a chocolate sundae with puffed rice? Lots of the fellers call for them.”

“No, thanks.” Myron descended from the stool and went out, more than ever assured of the undesirability of Parkinson School as a place of sojourn. Think of a town where you couldn’t get a peach-and-cream! Why, even the smallest shops in Port Foster knew what a peach-and-cream was! He cast contemptuous looks upon the modest stores and places of business along Adams Street, and even the new Burton Block over on the corner of School Street, six stories high and glittering with broad glass windows, only drew a word of derision. “Suppose they call that thing a skyscraper,” he muttered. “Huh! Puffed rice!”

Returning, he went through School Street to Washington Avenue. The south side of that shady thoroughfare, called Faculty Row, presented a pleasing vista, in each direction, of neat lawns and venerable elms and glowing beds of flowers. Here and there a sprinkler tossed its spray into the sunlight. Myron had to acknowledge, albeit grudgingly, that Port Foster had nothing prettier to offer. Facing him, across the Avenue, since School Street ended there, was the main gate to the campus, and straight ahead a shady tunnel roofed with closely-set linden trees led the eyes to the gleaming façade of Parkinson Hall, which, unlike the other school buildings, was of light-hued sandstone and was surmounted by an imposing dome. From the gate in front of him two other similar paths led diagonally away, and choosing the right-hand one Myron found grateful relief from the sun. He removed his hat and wiped the perspiration from his forehead with an immaculate handkerchief, and when he had finished returned the handkerchief to his breast pocket very carefully, allowing a corner—it happened to be the corner bearing the embroidered monogram—to protrude carelessly.

As he neared Sohmer he passed a group of four boys lying on the grass beneath the trees. Their conversation dwindled as he approached, ceased entirely as he came abreast and then went on again subduedly after he had gone by. His former irritation returned. What was there about him to make fellows stare or giggle or smile? Even down town he had noticed it, and now, although he could not hear what was being said behind him, [he felt that he was being discussed]. He was conscious of being better dressed than any of the boys he had seen yet, there was nothing unusual in his looks so far as he knew and he believed that he carried himself and walked in an ordinary manner. He decided again that they were all a lot of savages or “small town” gykes. He was glad he was leaving them tomorrow.

Back in Number 17, he found that Dobbins had gone out. In the bedroom that remarkable youth’s suit of rough red-brown material—it was much too heavy for summer wear and reminded Myron somewhat of a horse-blanket—that he had worn on his arrival lay carelessly tossed across a bed. It was the bed that Myron had chosen for himself, and he distastefully removed the clothes to the other one. As he did so he looked for the maker’s tag inside the collar and smiled ironically when he read “Bon Ton Brand.”

“Ready-made,” he murmured.

Dobbins had decorated the top of his chiffonier with two photographs and Myron examined them. One was a group picture of four persons; a woman rather thin and angular but with a kind and sweet face, a girl of some fourteen years, awkward and staring, and two younger girls, the littlest perhaps six. All were dressed in their finest and all, at least to Myron’s sophisticated sight, were dowdy. He concluded that the persons were Dobbins’ mother and sisters. The second photograph was a more ambitious affair and showed a man of about forty years. He had a square, much seamed face from which two keen eyes looked straight at the beholder. A funny little patch of beard adorned the chin and above it a wide mouth was drawn severely down at the corners. In the photograph the man looked stern and hard and even cross, Myron thought, but there was something nice about the countenance in spite of that, something suggesting that behind the weathered face were clean thoughts and kindliness.

“That’s the Spruce Gum King,” he reflected. “I guess if he hadn’t been scared at the camera he’d have looked rather a fine old chap, in spite of the little bunch of whiskers. He looks something like Dobbins, too: same sort of eyes and—and same expression about the chin. Only Dobbins is more lazy and good-natured, I guess.”

Later, his trunks came—there were two of them—and he had the expressman set them behind the door, one atop the other. There was no sense in opening them, for his kit-bag provided all he needed for the night. By that time it was nearing the supper hour and there was a rustling in the leaves of the lindens and the air was cooler. He told himself that whether Dobbins ever returned was nothing to him, and yet he found himself listening for the other’s heavy tread in the corridor. He wondered where Dobbins had gone, and rather resented his absence. The magazine which he had been reading beside the open window ceased to hold his attention and he glanced at his watch. A quarter to six. The supper hour was six o’clock. He had looked that up in his copy of the school catalogue. And you ate in Alumni Hall, which, as the plan of the school showed, was the building on the extreme left of the line. Finally Myron stripped to his waist and had a good splurge with soap and water. Some kindly soul had supplied a towel and it wasn’t until he was through using it that he saw the inscription “Dobbins” on one end.

“Well, how was I to know?” he grumbled. “Maybe I’d better dig into the trunk and get out a few of my own.”

But after supper would do, and just now he was feeling decidedly hungry, and washing up had refreshed him and made life look more pleasant. He hoped there would be something fit to eat, but he didn’t expect it. He was getting back into his clothes when the approach of his temporary room-mate was announced from some distance down the hall by the clump-clump of heavy shoes. Dobbins was peculiarly ungentle with doors. He flung them open and didn’t care what happened to them afterwards. In the present case the door crashed back against the trunks behind it with a most annoying bang, but Dobbins didn’t appear to have heard it. He was strangely attired, was Dobbins, and Myron, one arm in his shirt, gazed in astonishment and for a moment forgot to go on with his dressing.

A faded yellowish-brown jersey with half of the left sleeve missing and the other torn and mended—and torn and not mended—was surmounted by a canvas football jacket held together down the front with a black shoe-lace and a piece of twine. The jacket was so old and stained that Myron could easily believe it an heirloom, something handed down through generations of football-playing Dobbinses! A pair of rather new khaki pants, woollen stockings of brown twice ringed with light blue that well matched the jersey in condition, and scuffed and scarred football shoes completed the costume. Dobbins’ hair was every which way and there was more or less dirt on his broad countenance through which the perspiration had flowed in little rivulets with interesting results.

“Hello, kiddo!” Dobbins greeted jovially. “How’s the grouch coming on? Say, they’ve got a swell gridiron here; two or three of ’em, in fact. Wonderful turf. It’s a pleasure to fall on it, honest! Hear from your old man yet?”

“Hardly,” replied Myron drily. “What have you been doing?”

“Me? Sweating, son, mostly. Practising football some, too.”

“Oh! I didn’t know you played.”

“Me? That guy Camp and I wrote the rules! Looks like we had enough fellers to build forty teams. Must have been ’most a thousand of ’em over there. Every time I turned around I trod on some one. You didn’t go over, eh?”

“No, I—I was busy. Besides, I didn’t know they were holding practice today. I supposed they’d start tomorrow.”

“Been at it three days already, I hear. Got a coach here that looks like he knew his business, Foster. Ever try football?”

“I’ve played some,” answered Myron, with a smile that seemed to combine patience and pity. “I expect to go out for it when I get settled somewhere.”

“Still thinking of leaving, are you? You’re going to lose a mighty good school, son. I sure do like this place. Well, I’ve got a hunger like a river-boss. Guess I’ll get back to store clothes and find the trough. You going now?”

“Yes, I think so.”

“Well, tell ’em to save a little of everything for me.” Dobbins’ voice came muffled from above the basin in the bedroom, and Myron, remembering the towel, hurried out.

[CHAPTER IV]
MYRON DECIDES TO STAY

At dining hall it appeared that places had not yet been assigned and Myron was conducted to a seat between a large, stout youth who seemed afflicted with asthma and a shy, red-cheeked boy who promptly upset his glass of milk when Myron asked for the biscuits. Rather to his surprise, the food was excellent and plentiful. There were many tables, each seating ten boys, and most of them were filled when Myron reached the hall. There was a good deal of noise, as was natural when nearly four hundred normally healthy boys were being fed. At Myron’s table no one appeared to be acquainted with any one else and in consequence there was little conversation. The asthmatic youth wheezily ventured a remark, but Myron’s reply was not encouraging and the youth gave all his attention again to dropping bits of biscuit in his stewed pears and salvaging them noisily. Myron was glad when the stout chap, finding nothing else to devour, sighed heavily and left the table. His place was filled again, however, a moment later by a clean-cut fellow of about nineteen years, a good-looking, neatly-dressed boy of what Myron mentally called his own sort. Conversation with him seemed natural and desirable, and Myron broke the ice by offering the biscuits. The newcomer accepted one, said “Thanks” politely and cast a brief and appraising glance over his neighbour.

“They’re not bad,” said Myron.

“No, they never are,” answered the other. “I wonder if you can reach the butter.”

Myron could and did. “Not up to the biscuits,” he offered.

“No? What seems to be wrong with it?”

“Too salty for me.”

“I see. Well, you’d naturally like it fresh.”

Myron shot a covert and suspicious glance at the other. It seemed to him that there had been a faint emphasis on the word “fresh.” Perhaps he had only imagined it, though, for his neighbour’s expression was quite guileless. He was leisurely buttering a portion of the biscuit and appeared to have forgotten Myron’s existence. Myron felt faintly uncomfortable and applied himself silently to his food. Across the board another chair was pushed back and, almost before its occupant was out of it, again taken. Myron observed rather annoyedly that the new occupant of the place was Dobbins. He nodded across and dropped his eyes to his plate. He hoped that Dobbins wouldn’t try to converse. Somehow, he didn’t want the chap at his right to think him a friend of Dobbins’. But Dobbins, after an approving look about the table, did just what Myron had hoped he wouldn’t do.

“How you making out, Foster?” he inquired. “Grub meeting your approval?”

“Yes, thanks,” responded Myron coldly.

“That’s good. I see you—Hello!”

“Hello,” said the boy at Myron’s right affably. “How do you feel now?”

“Great! It sure was hot, though. Bet you I dropped five pounds this afternoon. But I’ll get it back right now if they’ll give me half a chance!” Dobbins chuckled and Myron’s neighbour smiled responsively. Myron wondered how Dobbins and this chap beside him happened to be so chummy. He wondered still more when, a minute later, his neighbour changed his seat for one just vacated beside Dobbins, and entered into an animated conversation with him. Myron couldn’t catch more than an occasional word above the noise of talking and clattering dishes, but he knew that the subject of their discourse was football. He was glad when he had finished his supper and could leave the table.

There was a reception to the new students that evening at the Principal’s residence, but Myron didn’t go. What was the use, when by noon tomorrow he would have shaken the dust of Warne from his shoes and departed for a school where fellows of his station and worth were understood and appreciated? Joe Dobbins, however, attended and didn’t get back to the room in Sohmer until nearly ten o’clock, by which time Myron had exhausted all the reading matter he could find and, pyjama-clad, was sitting at a window and moodily looking out into the dimly lighted yard. Joe entered in his usual crash-bang manner and breezily skimmed his hat toward the table. It missed the table and went to the floor, where, so far as its owner was concerned, it was allowed to stay. Myron reflected that it wasn’t hard to account for the battered condition of that hat.

“Heard from your old man yet?” asked Joe, dropping into a chair and stretching his long legs across the floor.

“Meaning my father?” asked Myron stiffly.

“Yep. Has he telegraphed?”

“No, unless he’s sent a night message. He might. Sometimes he doesn’t get back from the yard until rather late.”

“Yard? What sort of yard?”

“Shipyard. He builds boats.”

“Oh, boatyard, you mean. I know a fellow in Portland has a boatyard. Makes some crackajack sloops.”

“We build ships,” corrected Myron patiently. “Battleships, passenger ships, cargo carriers and such. Some of them are whopping big ones: sixteen and eighteen thousand tons.”

“Gosh! I’d like to see that place. I suppose you’ll be going to work with him when you get through here.”

“Not exactly. I shall go through college first, of course.”

“Oh! Well, say, honest injun, Foster, do you think a college course cuts any ice with a fellow? The old man says I can go to a college—if I can get in,—but I don’t know. I wouldn’t get through until I was twenty-two or twenty-three, and seems to me that’s wasting a lot of time. What do you think?”

“Depends, I suppose, on—on the individual case. If you feel that you want to get to work in the chewing-gum factory and can’t afford to go through college——”

“Where do you get that chewing-gum factory stuff?” asked Joe.

“Why, I thought you said your father made spruce gum.”

“No, the Lord makes it. The old man gathers it and sells it. Spruce gum is the resin of spruce trees, kiddo.”

“Oh,” said Myron vaguely. “Well, I dare say he will need you to help him gather it. In your case, Dobbins, going through college might be wasting time.”

Joe laughed.

“What’s the joke?” asked the other suspiciously.

“Well, I was having what you call a mind picture of the old man and me picking that gum. Know how many tons of the stuff he handles in a year? Nearly a hundred and thirty: about two hundred and fifty thousand pounds! He has over a hundred pickers employed, and buys a lot from fellows who pick on their own hook.”

“Oh!” said Myron. “Well, how was I to know? You distinctly said the Lord made it and your father gathered it, didn’t you?”

“That’s right; my error, kiddo——”

“Kindly cut out that——”

“Sorry; I forgot. Well, I don’t have to worry about college just yet, do I? We’ll see first if I can stick here long enough to get my time! I wouldn’t mind playing football on a good college team, though: Harvard or Yale or Dartmouth or one of those big ’uns.”

“Probably not,” replied Myron drily. “Nobody would. I wouldn’t myself.” Somehow he managed to convey the impression that in his case such a thing was not only possible but probable, but that for Joe to set his hopes so high was absurd. Joe’s greenish-grey eyes flickered once, but he made no comment. Instead:

“You played much?” he asked.

“Quite a bit,” answered the other carelessly. “I captained the Port Foster High team last fall.”

“Must have then! Where’d you play?”

“Position? Left half. End the year before that. What do you play?”

“Me? Oh, most anything in the line. I’m not fussy. Played tackle most of last year. Like to play guard better, though. Football’s a great game, isn’t it?”

“Not bad,” acknowledged Myron. “By the way, who was the fellow you were so thick with at supper tonight?”

“Him? Name’s Keith or something. Played on last year’s team and was coaching the linemen today. Nice guy. Bet he can play, too.”

“Looked rather light to me,” commented Myron.

“Think so? Maybe. Anyway, he knows how to drill the line, or I’m a Dutchman. What time is it? I’m getting sleepy. You weren’t over at the party, were you?”

“No, it didn’t interest me. As I’m not going to stay, why be bored by that sort of thing?”

“Hm,” said Joe.

“What’s ‘Hm’ mean?”

“Nothing. Just thinking. Say, what’s your objection to this place, Foster? If it’s just me, why, say, I’ll get out gladly. Fellow I met tonight told me he has a dandy room in the village. I’m not fussy about living on the campus.”

“Oh, it isn’t just that,” said Myron. “I don’t like the—the atmosphere here.”

“Well, it is sort of close tonight, but I guess it would be anywhere in this part of the country. September’s likely to——”

“I wasn’t referring to the air,” corrected the other loftily. “I used the word in its other sense.”

“Didn’t know it had another sense,” said Joe cheerfully. “All right. But I was just thinking that if you had to have this place to yourself I could beat it, and no hard feelings.”

“They’d stick some one else in here, I guess. Besides, I wouldn’t want to put you out. After all, you’ve got as much right here as I have, I suppose.” That statement had a rather dubious sound, however, and again Joe’s eyes flickered and the very ghost of a smile hovered for an instant about the corners of his wide mouth.

“Yeah, but the next chap might be more your style, Foster. I’m sort of rough-and-ready, I guess. Don’t run much to etiquette and wouldn’t know what to do in one of those silk collars you wear. I should think they’d make your neck awfully warm.” And Joe ran a finger around inside his own very low linen collar apprehensively.

“I hope I haven’t said anything to make you think that I—that you——”

“Oh, no, you haven’t said anything: at least, not much: but I can see that I’d be persona non compos, or whatever the word is, around these diggings. You think it over and let me know. I guess that Hoyt guy wouldn’t mind if I got a room outside somewhere. Well, here’s where I hit the hay.”

“There’s no sense in my thinking it over,” answered Myron a bit querulously, “as I tell you I’m not going to stay here.”

“Don’t think there’s any doubt about it, eh?”

“Certainly not!”

“All right. I was only thinking that if you did stay——”

“I haven’t the least intention of staying. I wish you’d get that fixed in your mind, Dobbins.”

“Sure! I’ll go to sleep and dream about it!”

If Myron dreamed of anything he had no recollection of having done so in the morning. He awoke in a far more cheerful frame of mind to find a cool and fragrant breeze flapping the curtain and a patch of golden sunlight lying across his bed. He had slept like a log. A glance at the neighbouring bed showed that Joe Dobbins was up, although Myron’s watch proved the time to be still short of seven-thirty. From across the campus a bell was ringing loudly. It was doubtless that sound that had awakened him. Usually he turned over and had a nap before getting up, but this morning, although he buried his head in the pillow again, sleep didn’t return to him. Perhaps it was just as well, he reflected, for that telegram from his father ought to be along soon, and he would probably have a busy morning getting away. So far he had not considered what he would do in case they couldn’t take him at Kenwood. He rather hoped they could, though. It would be a big satisfaction, and an amusing one, too, to play on the Kenwood eleven and show these unappreciative fellows at Parkinson what they had missed! Myron could play football and knew it, and knew as well that in losing his services Parkinson was losing something worth while. It would be fun to say carelessly to some Parkinson fellow after he had aided Kenwood to beat her rival: “Yes, I did think of going to your school: in fact, I actually spent a night there: but they treated me rather rotten and I got out. They promised me a room to myself, you know, and then tried to make me go in with another chap. It was rather coarse work, and I told them so before I left.” Whereupon the Parkinson boy would tell it around and there’d be regrets galore.

That was a pleasing dream, and under the exciting influence of it Myron jumped out of bed and sought a bath. While he was shivering in the icy water he recalled the fact that there was such a thing as chapel or morning prayers or something, and he wondered if he was under obligations to attend that ceremony. He decided the question in the negative and, returning to his room, dressed leisurely, selecting a grey tie with a yellow figure and a yellow handkerchief with a narrow grey border. The bell had long since ceased its clamour and peace had settled over the yard. Dressed, he went downstairs. In the corridor, close by the entrance, was a notice board and a letter rack. He didn’t bother to peruse the few notices nor would he have paid any attention to the rack had his fleeting glance not been arrested by the sight of a buff envelope. He stopped and looked more closely. It was a telegram and, yes, it was addressed to Myron W. Foster, Parkinson School, Warne, Mass. In blue pencil was “S 17.”

At last! He took it to the entrance and paused on the top step in the sunlight and tore off an end of the envelope very carefully. Then he withdrew the folded sheet of buff paper and with a satisfied smile began to read it. But the smile vanished in the next instant and, although he read the message through a second and even a third time, he could not make the sense of it correspond with his expectation.

“Your mother and I very sorry about your room letter from school arrived after your departure explaining satisfactorily Think you had better stay there however for the present and arrange for single suite when same can be had Love from us both Father.”

[CHAPTER V]
ON THE GRIDIRON

Myron’s connection with Parkinson School began inauspiciously. After an eleventh-hour effort to get his studies scheduled, and the discovery that he was required to take two courses he didn’t want to take and to omit one that he did, a summons came to him to visit the Office. There Mr. Morgan, assistant to the Principal, reminded him that attendance at chapel was compulsory and then announced that there appeared to be some doubt that he could enter the second class owing to the fact that his Latin was not up to the requirements. That was disheartening, for Myron had coached on Latin during the summer and been pronounced fit for the third-year class at Parkinson or any other preparatory school. Yesterday he would have received the announcement with unconcern, but today, since the arrival of that disappointing telegram, he found cause in it for real alarm. At well past seventeen one doesn’t like to be put in with fellows who average sixteen, Myron held. As a matter of fact, the third class contained more students of his age than it did of fellows younger, and he would not have found himself out of place there. But he didn’t know that, and as a result he pleaded very hard to be allowed to enter the class above. In the end, after much hesitation, and with no very good grace, Mr. Morgan consented.

“But you’ll have to do some hard work, Foster, if you’re to stay there. Unless you’re willing to, I’d advise you to go into the third.”

“I’ll work, sir. Maybe I could coach in Latin.”

“Yes, you could do that. If you like, I’ll give you the address of a fellow who does a good deal of tutoring and gets excellent results.” He wrote the address on a slip and Myron tucked it in his pocket. “Well, that’s all, I think. I hope you will get on nicely, Foster. Let me see, your adviser is——”

“Mr. Cooper, sir.”

“Good. Don’t hesitate to consult him. He’s a fine man and you’ll like him immensely, I think. Good morning.”

Myron had a spare hour after dinner and spent it unpacking. When some of his things had been distributed around the study the place really looked fairly homelike and attractive, and he began to look forward to a year at Parkinson with more equanimity. If only he wasn’t handicapped with his Latin, he thought, things wouldn’t be so bad. With Dobbins out of the way and the study and bedroom to himself, he guessed he could get along fairly comfortably. There was a half-hour of physics at three, and after that he was through for the day. He returned to Sohmer and changed into his football togs, which, unlike the nondescript garments worn by Joe Dobbins, were fairly new and of the best materials. When he had examined himself critically and appreciatively in the glass he sauntered downstairs, skirted the end of the gymnasium building and had his first real look at the playfield.

Nearly twelve acres of still green turf stretched before him, his view uninterrupted save by the grandstand directly before him. To his left were the tennis courts, both clay and grass, and about them white-clad figures darted. Nearer at hand, the blue-grey running track inclosed the first team gridiron. Beyond that two more pairs of goal-posts met his sight, and then the baseball diamonds filled the balance of the field. Track and gridirons and diamonds were already occupied, and the nearer grandstand held a handful of boys who had gathered in the warm sunlight to watch the activities. Football practice was called for three-thirty, and it was nearly four when Myron reached the field. He was in no hurry to join the panting and perspiring squads that trotted around over the turf, and so he perched himself on one of the lower seats of the stand and looked the situation over.

Not far away the manager and assistant manager, both earnest-looking youths, talked to a stout man in a faded brown sweater who later turned out to be the trainer, Billy Goode. Myron wondered where the coach might be, but he couldn’t find any one who much resembled his idea of what that gentleman should look like. However, with more than a hundred fellows at work out there it was easy enough to overlook him. A squad of advanced players trotted near, going through elementary signal work. Rather to Myron’s surprise, Joe Dobbins was amongst them, sandwiched between two capable-looking youths in togs quite as disreputable as his. Joe was acting as right guard, it seemed. Myron’s opinion of Joe as a football player went up a peg, for it was fairly evident that this squad was made up of last-year fellows and probably contained the nucleus of what in a few days would be known as the first squad. About this time Myron became aware that some of the fellows about him on the grandstand were viewing him curiously. Doubtless they were wondering why, being in playing togs, he didn’t get down there and go to work. Of course it was none of their business, but maybe it was time he found the coach and reported.

He made inquiry of the manager, a slim, very alert youth armed with a formidable notebook in which he was making entries when Myron approached. “Mr. Driscoll? He’s around here somewhere.” The manager, whose name was Farnsworth, looked frowningly about the field. “Yes, there he is down there, the man with the blue sweater. Are you just reporting for practice?”

“Yes,” answered Myron. “I wasn’t out yesterday.”

“What’s the name?” asked Farnsworth briskly.

“Foster.”

“Foster?” The manager fluttered the leaves of the big notebook until he found the F’s. Then: “What are the initials, Foster?”

“M. W.”

“Class?”

“Third.”

“Ever played before?”

“Naturally.” Farnsworth shot a quick glance.

“Where?” he asked.

“Port Foster High School Team, Port Foster, Delaware. I played two years there.”

“Line or backfield?”

“Backfield: before that at end.”

“Had your physical exam yet?”

“No, I didn’t know about it. Where do I take it?”

“See Mr. Tasser, in the gym. Any time between ten and twelve and four and six. Better do it today. Rules are rather strict, Foster. All right. Report to Cummins. He’s handling the new men. You’ll find him down there by the east goal: ask any one.”

“I though I’d tell the coach——”

“Not necessary. Cummins’ll look after you.”

Myron shrugged mentally and turned his steps toward the indicated location. “One of those smart Alecks,” he thought. “Thinks he’s the whole push. All right, it’s not my business to tell him his. If they want me to waste my time with the beginners it’s their funeral.”

Cummins wasn’t difficult to find. Myron heard his bark long before he reached him. Nearly thirty youths, most of them youngsters of fourteen and fifteen, although here and there an older boy was to be noticed, were learning to handle the ball. Cummins appeared to be about eighteen, a heavily-built chap with a shock of reddish-brown hair and a round face liberally spattered with freckles. Just now the face was scowling ferociously and Cummins was sneering stridently at his charges. Myron took an instant dislike to Mr. Charles Cummins, and, or so it appeared, Mr. Charles Cummins took an equal dislike to Myron.

“Well, well, well, WELL!!” barked Cummins as Myron came up. “What do you fellows think this is? A lawn party or a sewing circle or what? Maybe you’re waiting for the ice-cream to be served? Listen just one minute, will you? Stop that ball, you long-legged fellow! Now then, let’s understand each other. This is football practice. Get that? The idea is to learn to hold that ball without having it get away from you, and to catch it and to pass it. We aren’t doing aesthetic dancing or—or acting in a pageant. This is work, W-O-R-K, work! Any of you who are out here just to get the air or to tan your necks can quit right now. I’m here to show you hopeless ninnies how to handle a football, and I propose to do it if it takes from now to Christmas, and the sooner you put your minds on what you’re doing and try a little, the sooner you’ll get through. Now start that ball around again and, for the love of limes, remember some of the things I’ve told you. When you catch it, grab it with both hands and hug it. It isn’t an egg. It won’t break. That’s the idea, Judson, or whatever your name is. Go ahead, go ahead! Get some ginger into it! Pass it along! Don’t go to sleep. I said hug it, not fondle it, Whittier! When you—Hello, more trouble?”

“The manager fellow told me to report to you,” said Myron as Cummins turned a baleful gaze on him.

“Oh, the ‘manager fellow’ told you that, did he? What does the ‘coach fellow’ say?”

“I haven’t seen the coach yet,” answered Myron coldly.

“Haven’t you? Why, say, maybe you won’t like him! Don’t you think you ought to look him over first? It would be fierce if you didn’t happen to approve of him. What’s your name?”

“Foster.”

“All right, Foster, you push right in there and show me how you catch a football. Something tells me that my troubles are all over now that you’ve joined this aggregation of stars!”

Myron suppressed the angry retort that sprang to his lips and took his place in the big circle. “Bounder!” he muttered as he did so. The boy next to him on the left heard and snickered, and Cummins guessed the reason. Unseen of Myron, he grinned. “When you can get ’em mad,” he said to himself, “there’s hope for ’em.”

When the ball was passed to Myron he caught it deftly, bending his body over it, and then promptly sped it on to the youth who had snickered. The latter was unaccustomed to such speed and was not ready, and the ball bounded away. He lumbered after it and scooped it up, returning to his place with an accusing scowl for Myron.

“Think you’re smart, I suppose,” he grumbled.

“Sorry,” said Myron, “but you ought to be ready for it.”

“Is that so? Well——”

“Cut out that talking!” barked Cummins. “Speed it up, fellows!”

There was ten minutes more of the dreary work, during which Myron mechanically received the pigskin and sent it on to the next in the circle without a hitch. If he expected to win commendation from Cummins, however, he was disappointed. Cummins was eloquent with criticism, but never once did he utter a word of approval. At last:

“That’ll do for that, fellows,” he called. “You may rest a minute. Maybe some of you’ll get your strength back.” He approached Myron with an accusing scowl. “What are you doing in this bunch?” he demanded. “You don’t belong here.”

“I was sent here,” replied Myron warmly.

“Didn’t you have sense enough to tell Farnsworth you weren’t a greenie? Think I’ve got nothing to do but waste my time?”

“Well, you’re not the only one who’s doing it, are you? What about my time?”

“That’s your affair. I didn’t want you, believe me! You ought to have told him you knew something about a football. He’s no mind-reader, you know.”

“I told him I’d played two years on a high school team——”

“Oh! That explains it. You high school ginks usually don’t know enough football to make the first year team. Guess Farnsworth thought you were like the run of ’em.”

“Maybe,” replied Myron indifferently, “but it’s not my business to teach you fellows how to run your affairs.”

“Hard luck for us, isn’t it? Well, say, Mr. ’Igh and ’Aughty, you trek across there and tell Farnsworth I say you’re graduated from my bunch. Get it? Tell him to put you somewhere else, and tell him I don’t care where it is!”

“Thanks,” returned Myron with deep sarcasm. “I’m horribly sorry to leave you, though. It’s a real pleasure working under such a gentlemanly instructor, Mr. Cummins.”

Cummins watched him for a long moment with his mouth open. “Well, what do you know about that?” he murmured at last. “The cheeky beggar!” Then he grinned again and, surprising amused and delighted expressions on the countenances of those of his squad who had been near enough to overhear the conversation, quickly changed the grin for a scowl. “All right now!” he barked. “Line up along there. Who’s got the ball? Let’s see what you pin-heads know about starting.”

Myron’s message to Farnsworth resulted in his finishing the practice with a group of fellows whose education had progressed beyond the rudimentary stage. Toward the last of the period he was put to catching punts with a half-dozen other backfield candidates and performed to his own satisfaction at least. There was no scrimmage today, nor was there any for several days following, and at five o’clock Coach Driscoll sent them off to the showers. Later Myron went upstairs and found the physical director and underwent his examination, obtaining a chart filled with perplexing lines and puzzling figures and official permission to engage in “any form of athletics approved by the Committee.” After which he returned rather wearily to Number 17 Sohmer and Joe Dobbins.

[CHAPTER VI]
“A. T. MERRIMAN”

The next forenoon Myron set off in a spare hour to find the tutor whose address Mr. Morgan had given him. If he had cherished the notion of possibly getting along without coaching in Latin his experiences that morning had banished it. Mr. Addicks, or Old Addie, as he was called, was a likable sort and popular with the students, but he was capable of a gentle sarcasm that was horribly effective with any one whose skin was less thick than that of a rhinoceros, and an hour or so ago he had caused Myron to heartily wish himself small enough to creep into a floor crack and pull some dust over him! No use talking, Myron told himself as he set forth for Mill Street, he’d have to find this chap and get right to work. He wouldn’t face that horrible Addicks again until he had put in a solid week of being tutored. It would get him in bad at the Office, maybe, if the instructor called on him very often in that week, for he would just say “Not prepared,” but anything was to be preferred to standing up there like a jay and letting Addicks make fun of him!

When he reached the head of School Street he pulled the slip of paper again from his pocket and made sure of the address. “A. T. Merriman, 109 Mill Street,” was what was written there. He asked his way at the next corner and was directed across the railroad. “Mill Street runs at right angles to the track,” said the citizen who was directing him. “You’ll see a granite building after you pass the crossing. That’s Whitwell’s Mill. The street you want runs along the farther side of it.” Myron thanked him and went on down School Street. The obliging citizen gazed after him in mingled surprise and admiration.

“Well, he’s certainly a dressy boy,” he murmured. “Must be Old John W. Croesus’s son!”

Mill Street wasn’t far and 109 was soon found, but the character of the district wasn’t at all to Myron’s liking. Ragged and dirty children overflowed the sidewalks and played in the cobbled roadway, slatternly women gossiped from open windows, dejected-looking men lounged at the corners, stray cats rummaged the gutters. The houses, frame structures whose dingy clapboards were flush with the street, had apparently seen far better days. Now dust and grime lay thick on them and many a window was wanting a pane of glass. The prospect of penetrating to such a place every day was revolting, and, having found the numerals “109” above a sagging porch, Myron was strongly inclined to turn back. But he didn’t, and a tinkle that followed his pull at the rusty knob beside the door brought a stout and frowsy woman who wiped her hands on her apron as she pulled the portal open.

“Mr. Merriman?” inquired Myron.

“I don’t know is he in, sir. One flight up and you’ll see his name on the door. If you come again, sir, just you step right in. The door ain’t never locked in the daytime.”

Myron mounted a creaky stairway guiltless of carpet and found himself in a narrow hall from which four doors opened. In spite of dinginess and want of repairs, the interior of 109 was, he had to acknowledge, astonishingly clean. One of the doors did present a card to the inquiring gaze, but in the gloom its inscription was not decipherable and so Myron chanced it and knocked. A voice answered from beyond the portal and nearly simultaneously a dog barked sharply. Myron entered.

The room was large and well lighted from two sides. It was also particularly devoid of furniture, or so it looked to the visitor. A large deal table strewn with papers and piled with books stood near the centre of the apartment where the cross light from the two pairs of windows fell on it. The floor was carpetless, but two scraps of straw matting saved it from utter bareness. There was a bench under the windows on one side and a flattened cushion and two faded pillows adorned it. What seemed to Myron the narrowest bed in the whole wide world, an unlovely thing of black iron rails, was pushed into a corner, and beside it was a box from which overflowed a grey blanket. Three chairs, one a decrepit armchair from whose leather covering the horsehair stuffing protruded in many places, stood about. There was also a bureau and a washstand. On the end of the former stood a small gas-stove and various pans and cooking utensils. Books, mostly sober-sided, dry-looking volumes, lay everywhere, on table, bureau, window-seat, chair and even on the floor. Between the several articles of furniture lay broad and arid expanses of unpainted flooring.

At first glance the room appeared to be inhabited only by a tall, thin but prepossessing youth of perhaps twenty years and a Scottish terrier whose age was a matter for conjecture since her countenance was fairly well hidden by sandy hair. The youth was seated at the deal table and the terrier was halfway between box and door, growling inquiringly at the intruder. At Myron’s entry Merriman tilted back in his chair, thrust his hands into his trousers pockets and said “Good morning” in a deep, pleasant voice. Then he added mildly: “Shut up, Tess, or I’ll murder you.” The terrier gave a last growl and retired to the box. As she settled down in it a series of astonishing squeaks emerged. Myron looked across startledly and Merriman laughed.

“Puppies,” he explained. “Six of them. That’s why she’s so ferocious. Seems to think every one who comes upstairs is a kidnapper. I tell her the silly things are too ugly to tempt any one, but she doesn’t believe me.”

“Will she let me see them?” asked Myron eagerly.

“Oh, yes.” Merriman drew his long length from the chair and led the way to the box. “Now then, old lady, pile out of here and let the gentleman have a look at your ugly ducklings.”

The terrier made no objection to being removed, but the puppies cried dismally at the parting. Myron chuckled. “Funny things!” he exclaimed. “Why, they haven’t got their eyes open yet!”

“No, they’re only six days old. How’s this one for a butter-ball? Isn’t he a fat rascal? All right, Tess, we won’t hurt them. I vouch for the gentleman. He never stole a puppy in all his innocent young life.”

“I never did,” Myron corroborated, “but I’d like to start right now!”

“Like dogs, eh?” asked the host.

“Yes, indeed. Funny thing is, though, that I’ve never owned one.”

“No? How does that happen?”

“I don’t know. My mother thinks they’re rather a nuisance around the house. Still, I dare say she’d have let me kept one if I’d insisted. I don’t suppose you—you’d care to sell one of those?”

“Oh, yes, I would. I’ll have to either sell them or give them: unless I send them off to the happy hunting ground.”

“Really? How much would they be?”

“The lot?” asked Merriman, a twinkle in his eye.

“Gee, no! One!”

“Five dollars. Tess is good stock, and the father is a thoroughbred belonging to Terrill, the stableman on Centre Street. Got a place to keep him?”

“I’d forgot about that,” owned Myron. “I’m afraid not. They wouldn’t let me have him in Sohmer, would they?”

“Scarcely!” laughed the other. “All right, old lady, back you go. Sit down—ah—What’s the name, please?”

“Foster. Mr. Morgan gave me your address. I want some tutoring in Latin, and he said he thought you could take me on.”

“Possibly. Just dump those books on the seat there. What hours do you have free, Foster?”

“This hour in the morning and any time in the evening.”

“What about afternoon?”

“I’m trying for the football team and that doesn’t leave me much time afternoons. Still, I guess we’re usually through by five.”

Merriman shook his head. “I’d rather not waste my time and yours, Foster. Football practice doesn’t leave a fellow in very good trim for tutoring. Better say the evening, I guess. How would seven to nine do?”

“Two hours?” asked Myron startledly.

“Yes, you can’t accomplish much in less. I can’t, anyhow.”

“Very well. Seven to nine. Shall I come here or——”

“I’ll come to you. What’s the number in Sohmer? Seventeen? All right. We’ll begin tomorrow. My terms are a dollar an hour. You pay for the time it takes me to get to you, usually about ten minutes. Can you arrange with your room-mate to let us have the place to ourselves at that time?”

“Oh, yes,” replied Myron confidently.

“Good. Now pull your chair over here, please, and we’ll see what the job is.”

Merriman had a lean face from which two dark brown eyes looked keenly forth. His mouth was broad and his nose straight and long. A high forehead, a deep upper lip and a firmly pointed chin added to the general effect of length. You couldn’t have called him handsome, by any stretch of the imagination, but there was something attractive in his homeliness. Perhaps it was the expression of the eyes or perhaps the smile that hovered continuously about the wide mouth. He dressed, Myron reflected, as wretchedly as Joe Dobbins: more wretchedly, in fact, for Joe’s clothes were at least new and good of their kind, whereas Merriman’s things were old, frayed, ill-fitting. His trousers, which bagged so at the knees that they made Merriman look crooked, had been a positive shock to the visitor. But in spite of attire and surroundings, Myron liked this new acquaintance. Above all, he liked his voice. It was deep without being gruff and had a kind of—of pleasant kindliness in it, he thought. After all, it was no fault to be poor if you couldn’t help it, he supposed; and he had known fellows back home—not intimately, of course, but well enough to talk to—who, while poor, were really splendid chaps.

Presently Merriman finished his questions and finished jotting down little lines and twirls and pot-hooks on a scrap of paper. Myron rather wished he knew shorthand too. It looked ridiculously easy the way Merriman did it. “All right, thanks,” said the latter as he laid his pencil down. “I think I know what we’ve got ahead of us. Frankly, I don’t see how they let you into the third with so little Latin, Foster. But we’ll correct that. How are you at learning, by the way? Does it come easy or do you have to grind hard?”

“Why, I think I learn things fairly easily,” replied Myron doubtfully. “Of course, Latin looks hard to me because I’ve never had much of it, but I think—I hope you won’t find me too stupid.” Afterwards, recalling the visit, it struck him as odd that he should have said that. Usually he didn’t trouble greatly about whether folks found him one way or another. He was Myron Foster, take him or leave him!

“I shan’t,” answered Merriman. “I’ve had all sorts and I always manage to get results.”

“Do you do much tutoring?” Myron asked.

“A good deal. Not so much now as later. Spring’s my busy time.”

“I shouldn’t think you’d have time for your own studies.”

“I’m not taking much this year. Only four courses. I could have finished last spring, but I wasn’t quite ready for college then. By the way, if you hear of any one wanting a nice puppy I wish you’d send them to me. I can’t keep all that litter and I’d hate to kill the poor little tykes.”

“I will,” Myron assured him. “And—and I’m not sure I shan’t buy one myself. I suppose I could find some one to keep him for me.”

“I think so. Well, good morning. Say good-bye to the gentleman, Tess.”

The terrier barked twice as Myron closed the door behind him.

[CHAPTER VII]
WITH THE AWKWARD SQUAD

“Sure! That’s all right,” said Joe Dobbins. “If I want to dig I can trot over to the library or somewhere. Seven to nine, you said?”

“Yes, but it won’t be for very long, I guess: maybe only a couple of weeks. Merriman seemed an awfully clever sort of a chap.”

“Must be if he can teach Latin! I never did see the good of that stuff, anyway.” Joe fluttered the pages of the book he had been studying. After a moment he said: “Say, Foster, you’re a sort of sartorial authority—how’s that for language, eh?—and you know what’s what in the line of clothes, I guess. Now I wish you’d tell me honestly if there’s anything wrong with the things I wear. They look all right to me, but I notice two or three of the fellows sort of piping ’em off like they were wondering about ’em. What’s wrong with the duds?” And Joe glanced over the grey suit, with the large green and blue threads running through it, that he was wearing.

“Why, they——” But Myron paused. Three days before he would not have hesitated to render a frank opinion of the clothes; would have welcomed the opportunity, in fact: but this afternoon he found that he didn’t want to hurt Joe’s feelings.

“Spit it out, kiddo—I mean Foster! Let’s know the worst.”

“Well, I suppose they’re good material and well made, Dobbins, but the fact is they—they’re different, if you see what I mean.”

“I don’t. What do you mean, just? Style all wrong by Fifth Avenue standards?”

“By any standard,” replied Myron firmly. “They look ready-made.”

“But, gee, they are ready-made! I never had a suit made to order in my life. Why should I? I’m not hump-backed or—or got one leg longer than the other!”

“Some ready-made clothes don’t look it, though,” explained Myron. “Yours do. Did you get them in Portland?”

“Sure. We’ve got some dandy stores in Portland.”

“Did that suit come from the best one?” asked Myron drily.

“N-no, it didn’t, to tell the hideous truth.” Joe chuckled. “You see, the old man has a friend who runs a store and we’ve both got sort of used to dealing with this guy. He’s a pretty square sort, too; a Canuck. Peter Lafavour’s his name. But I guess maybe Peter doesn’t know so much about style as he makes out to, eh? I always sort of liked these duds, though: they’re sort of—er—snappy, eh?”

Myron smiled. “They’re too snappy, Dobbins. That’s one out with them. Then they don’t fit anywhere. And they look cheap and badly cut.”

“Aside from that they’re all right, though?” asked Joe hopefully.

“Perhaps, although gentlemen aren’t wearing pockets put on at an angle or cuffs on the sleeves.”

“And Peter swore that this suit was right as rain!” sighed Joe. “Ain’t he the swine? How about my other one?”

“Well, it’s better cut and hasn’t so many queer folderols,” answered Myron, “but it looks a good deal like a grain-sack when you get it on, old man.”

“What do you know about that!” Joe shook his head dismally, but Myron caught the irrepressible twinkle in his room-mate’s eyes. “Guess I’ll have to dig down in the old sock and buy me a new outfit,” he continued. “I suppose those tony-looking duds you wear were made to order, eh? Think your tailor could make me a suit if I wrote and told him what size collar I wear?”

“I’m afraid not, but I saw a tailor shop in the village here today that looked pretty good. Why not try there?”

“Blamed if I don’t, kid—Foster! I don’t suppose you’d want to go along with me and see that I get what’s right? I’d hate to find I had too many buttons on my vest—I mean waistcoat—when the things were done!”

“I don’t mind,” answered Myron after an imperceptible moment of hesitation, “although you really won’t need me if the chap knows his business. No first-class tailor will turn you out anything that isn’t correct.”

“Yeah, but—well, I’d feel easier in my mind if I had you along. Maybe tomorrow, eh? Somehow these duds I’ve got on don’t make such a hit with me as they did! Coming over to the gym? It’s mighty near time for practice.”

“In a minute,” answered Myron carelessly. “You run along.” Then he reflected that if he was to go with Joe to the tailor’s the next day he might just as well start in now and get used to being seen with him. “Guess I’m ready, though,” he corrected. “Come on.”

The distance from Sohmer to the gym was only a matter of yards, and it wasn’t until the two reached the entrance of the latter building that they encountered any one. Then, or so Myron imagined, the three fellows who followed them through the big oak door looked curiously from Joe’s astounding attire to his own perfectly correct grey flannels. He was glad when the twilight of the corridor was reached, and all the way down the stairs to the locker-room below he was careful to avoid all suggestions of intimacy with Joe.

Football was still in the first rather chaotic phase. An unusually large number of candidates had reported this fall, and, while in theory it was a fine thing to have so much material to select from, in reality it increased the work to be done tremendously. On the second day of school one hundred and twelve boys of all sizes and ages and all degrees of inexperience were on hand, and coach, captain and trainer viewed the gathering helplessly. Today a handful of the original number had dropped out of their own accord, but there were still nearly a hundred left, and when Myron, having changed to his togs, followed the dribble of late arrivals to the field he wondered what on earth would be done with them all. Perhaps Coach Driscoll was wondering the same thing, for there was a perplexed frown on his face as he talked with Billy Goode and contemplatively trickled a football from one hand to the other.

Myron rather liked the looks of Mr. Driscoll. So far he had not even spoken to the coach and doubted if the latter so much as knew of his existence, but there was something in the coach’s face and voice and quick, decisive movements that told Myron that he knew his business. “Tod” Driscoll was about thirty, perhaps a year or two more, and had coached at Parkinson for several seasons. He was a Parkinson graduate, but his football reputation had been made at Yale. He was immensely popular with the students, although he made no effort to gain popularity and was the strictest kind of a disciplinarian. Today, while Myron, pausing at the edge of the crowded gridiron a few yards distant, viewed him and speculated about him, the coach showed rather less decision than usual, for twice he gave instructions, once to Billy and once to the manager, and each time changed his mind.

“We’ve got to find more instructors,” Myron heard him say a trifle impatiently. “How about you, Ken? Know enough football to take a bunch of those beginners over to the second team gridiron?”

“I’m afraid not, Coach,” answered Kenneth Farnsworth.

“You don’t need to know much. What do you say, Billy? Who is there? I’ve got most of the veterans at work already, and there isn’t one of them that shouldn’t be learning instead of teaching.”

Myron didn’t hear the trainer’s reply, for at that moment a well-built, light-haired, somewhat harassed youth of apparently nineteen strode up to the group. “Look here, Coach,” he began before he was well within talking distance, “what about the backs? We’ve got to have some get-together work before Saturday’s game, haven’t we? Cater says you’ve got him in charge of a kindergarten class, Brown’s sewed up the same way, Garrison hasn’t shown up——”

“I know, Cap. But what are we going to do with this raft of talent? Some one’s got to take hold of them, and I can’t take more than twenty. Cummins is about ready to go on strike——”

“It is a mess, isn’t it?” Captain Mellen turned and viewed the scene puzzledly. “The worst of it is that there probably aren’t a dozen in the whole lot worth troubling with.”

“True, but we’ve got to find the dozen,” answered Mr. Driscoll. “We can’t afford to miss any bets this year, Cap. We’ll call the first-choice backs together at four. That’ll give us half an hour for kindergarten stuff. But I want a couple more fellows to take hold. Who are they?”

“Search me! Why not double them up, sir?”

“They’ve been doubled up—or pretty nearly. Cummins has about thirty to look after and Cater twenty-four or five. That’s too many. Sixteen’s enough for a squad. How about Garrison?”

“He isn’t here. I don’t know what——”

“He’s cut,” interposed Farnsworth. “Got a conference at four.”

“Conference! Gee, why couldn’t he have that some other time?” asked Jud Mellen.

“Time to start, sir,” said Farnsworth, looking at his watch.

“All right, let’s get at it. But I wish I could think—Who’s that fellow there, Mellen?” Mr. Driscoll dropped his voice. Mellen turned and looked at Myron and shook his head.

“I don’t know him, Coach. Who is he, Ken?”

“I think”—Farnsworth turned the pages of his book until he had found the F’s—“I think his name is Forrest. No, Foster. High school fellow. Two years playing. Passed a corking physical exam.”

“Foster!”

Myron, who had been aware that he was under discussion, joined the group. “Yes, sir?” he asked.

“Think you could take about twenty fellows over to the next field and show them how to handle the ball? You know the sort of stuff, don’t you? Passing, falling, starting and so on. Want to try it?”

“Yes, sir, I can do it all right.”

“Good! We’ve got such a mob here today that we’re short-handed. Stick to me a minute and I’ll round you up a bunch.”

“You can’t call him exactly modest, can you?” asked the manager of Billy Goode when the others had walked away. “‘I can do it all right,’ says he.”

“How do you know he can’t?” asked Billy. “And if he can there ain’t any harm in his saying so, is there? Say, if I was starting my life over again, my friend, I’d say yes to everything like that any one asked me. I missed a lot of good chances by being too modest.”

“And truthful?” laughed Kenneth.

“Let it go at modest,” said Billy smiling.

Myron received eighteen boys as his portion and led them across to the second team gridiron and set to work. Four other awkward squads adorned the field, the nearer one being under the care of Charles Cummins. Myron smiled secretly when he saw the surprised stare with which Cummins regarded him. When their glances met Cummins nodded shortly. To put his class through the third lesson was no trick for Myron, but it was dreary and tiresome work. It seemed to him that Coach Driscoll must have deliberately apportioned to him the stupidest boys on the field, for of all the awkward squads Myron had ever had anything to do with his was the awkwardest. But some few presently began to respond to treatment and by the time they were jumping out of the line and digging knees and elbows and shoulders into the turf in the effort to land on the trickling pigskin he felt that he hadn’t done so badly with them. He didn’t say much to them, for his own experience had shown him that too much instruction and criticism only confused the pupil, and neither did he try to impress them with their stupidity. As a result, most of them eventually forgot to be self-conscious and tried to follow instructions. Watching, Myron heard a voice at his elbow and looked around into the face of Cummins, who, giving his own charges a moment of rest, had walked across unnoticed.

“How do you like it?” Cummins inquired shortly.

“There are other things I’d rather be doing,” replied Myron. He didn’t feel particularly friendly toward this chap who had badgered him so a day or two before, and his tone showed it. A smile flickered around the corners of Cummins’ mouth.

“Main thing,” he said gravely, “is to be patient with them. I find that pays best.”

Myron turned and looked at him wonderingly. “That sounds well,” he replied sarcastically. Cummins grinned.

“Got it in for me, haven’t you?” he said. “Don’t blame you—er—Whatever Your Name Is. I was never cut out for a teacher. Besides, I want to get to work myself. What’s your line? Tackle?”

“I don’t know. Whatever I get, I suppose. Try that again, you chap. Get started quicker. I played half-back last year.”

“Guard’s my game. Well, I guess I’d better go back and hound those fellows some more. See you again, Foster, if I live.”

Myron wondered why Cummins had pretended not to recall his name at first. “Just to be as disagreeable as possible, I guess,” he concluded. Cummins’ hectoring voice floated across the field just then: “All right, my hearties! Line up again and, for the love of limes, look intelligent if you can’t act so!”

Ten minutes later the awkward squads were called to the bench and Myron went to work on Squad D or E, he didn’t know which it was, and trotted around the field behind a shrill-voiced quarterback, practising a handful of elementary plays that he already knew by heart. He wondered how long it would be before some one in authority discovered that they were wasting the time of a first-class half-back!

[CHAPTER VIII]
JOE TALKS SENSE

Parkinson played Mapleton the first Saturday after the opening of school and had no difficulty in scoring as she pleased, confining herself mainly to old-style line-bucking attack. Mapleton was not, however, a strong opponent, and the final score of 18 to 0 was not particularly complimentary to the home team. There was much ragged playing on both sides, for neither team had had more than a week of preparation. Parkinson started with four of last year’s players in the line and two behind it. The substitutes, of whom many were used before the contest was over, were not notably brilliant, with the possible exception of a lad named Keene, who went in as left end in the final five minutes, and of Joe Dobbins who played a steady game at right tackle for the entire fourth period. Myron, watching from the bench with half a hundred others, viewed Joe’s success with mingled emotions. He was rather surprised at Joe’s skill, but he was not a little disgruntled at the ease with which that raw youth had attained his success. Here was he, Myron, still kicking his heels with the fourth or fifth squad, while Joe, who played no better and knew no more football, was already chosen as possible school team material. Myron secretly thought it a “raw deal.” He had become fairly reconciled to remaining at Parkinson, but this afternoon he again began to suspect that his talents and merits were not to receive the consideration they deserved and to wish that he had been able to go elsewhere. They had worked him off on the kindergarten class as instructor two afternoons and he had received no thanks for his labours. Aside from that, he had received no sort of recognition. He might just as well be one of the raw recruits! He suspected that it might pay him to push himself forward a little: he believed that Joe had done that. But then Joe was just the sort of chap who would see nothing out of the way in self-advertisement. Although Myron held a very good opinion of himself as a football player he considered it beneath his dignity to beg for favours. If Coach Driscoll couldn’t discover talent for himself then he could do without it. “I’ll give them another week or so,” decided Myron, “and then if they haven’t given me a show I’ll quit.”

He was rather chilly toward Joe that evening.

The Latin was progressing well. Merriman saw that it did. He arrived like clockwork every evening save Sunday at exactly ten minutes past seven, spread his books and papers without the loss of a minute and had no breath for extraneous matters. “Good evening” was the extent of his small-talk. After that it was business with him. When, on the occasion of his first appearance in 17 Sohmer, Myron asked him how the puppies were getting along, Merriman frowned and said: “You aren’t paying me to talk puppies, Foster. Have you found the page?” Having finished the two-hour session, Merriman dropped his books into a green-cloth bag, took up his hat, said “Good-night, Foster,” and went. That, at least, was the usual procedure, but this Saturday night he varied it. When he had pulled the string of that green bag close he laid it beside his hat and asked: “Doing anything?”

“Doing—oh, no, not a thing,” answered Myron.

“Then I’ll stick around a few minutes.” Merriman pulled a chair toward him and settled his feet on it and sighed luxuriously. “I suppose you saw the game this afternoon. You told me you were out for the team, didn’t you?”

“Yes.” Myron’s voice may have sounded disgruntled, for Merriman smiled faintly and asked:

“What’s the matter? Working you too hard?”

“No, they aren’t working me at all,” replied Myron bitterly. “I mean, all I’m doing is going through a lot of stunts I learned two years ago. I guess things are sort of balled up this year. They’ve got so many candidates out there that they can’t begin to handle them all, and I dare say I’ll be just where I am in November—if I stay.”

“Cheer up,” said the other. “They’ll let you go before that.”

“But, hang it, Merriman, I’ve played the game for two years: more than that, counting when I was a kid: and I was captain of my team last year. That may not mean much to these fellows here, but at least it ought to secure me a chance to show what I can do.”

“Seems so. Doesn’t it? I mean, aren’t you getting a chance?”

“No, I’m not,” answered Myron warmly. “I’m fuddling around with about fifteen or sixteen other fellows, most of whom never saw a football until a week ago, and getting nowhere. No one pays any attention to you here. They just say ‘Report to Jones or Smith or some one’ and forget all about you.”

“Hm. Why not tell Driscoll you want a real try-out?”

“Why can’t he see that I deserve one? It isn’t my place to select his players for him!”

“N-no, but if there are so many candidates that he’s likely to overlook you——”

Merriman was interrupted by the entrance of Joe Dobbins. It was well after nine and Joe thought he was privileged to return home. Finding Merriman still there, however, he hesitated at the door. “Hello! I thought you were through, Foster. I’ll beat it.”

“We are through,” said Merriman. “I’m going myself in a minute.”

“Oh, all right. Don’t let me scare you away, though.”

Myron performed the introduction and the two boys shook hands.

“Glad to know you,” said Joe heartily. “Any guy who knows enough Latin to teach it to others can have my vote every time!”

Myron frowned. He wished that Joe wouldn’t talk so much like a rowdy, and he glanced at Merriman to see how that youth had taken his room-mate’s breeziness. Apparently Merriman was neither pained nor surprised. Instead, he was regarding Joe with smiling interest. “Thanks,” he said, “but being able to teach Latin to others doesn’t amount to much, Dobbins. When the other fellow knows a little less about any subject than you do you can trust a lot to bluff.”

“Ain’t that the truth?” exclaimed Joe, flinging himself into a chair. “Look at Foster there. He’s been teaching a lot of poor dubs how to catch a football, and I dare say they think he invented the game!” He winked at the visitor and grinned at Myron. The latter, however, was not feeling kindly enough toward Joe to take the joke gracefully. He flushed and scowled.

“I dare say I know as much football as some fellows who played this afternoon,” he said huffily.

“Right you are, kiddo! But that isn’t saying a whole lot. Some of those guys were pretty green, I thought. Did you see the game?” He looked at Merriman and the latter shook his head.

“No, I would have liked to, for, although I never played, I’m a regular football fan. But I don’t have much time for the games. I take it that you played today.”

“Me? A little. They put me in for the last quarter. Guess they didn’t have any one else.”

“Where do you play?” asked Merriman.

“Tackle, guard, anywhere around there. It’s a great game, football. I’d rather play it than—than study Latin! Say, you’re the guy that has the puppies, aren’t you? Foster was telling me. I’d like to see ’em. I’m crazy about dogs.”

“Come around some day,” replied Merriman cordially. “You’ll find me in usually between nine and ten and one and two.”

“I’ll just do that little thing,” Joe agreed. “Gee, if I had a place to keep one of ’em I’d fall for it. Maybe if I find a room outside I’ll buy one off you.”

“Glad to sell you one, Dobbins. I’ve got five that I don’t need. Well, I must be getting back. By the way, I’m home all the morning tomorrow. If you like to drop around I’ll be glad to show you my children.”

“It’s a go,” said Joe heartily. “Have ’em all dressed up for company, eh? I’ll be there.”

“Nice guy,” observed Joe when Merriman had taken his departure. “I sure do like a fellow that looks cheerful. Ever notice how many of the chaps here look like they’d just eaten a sour pickle, Foster? It doesn’t cost a cent more to look cheerful, either.”

“Your idea of looking cheerful is to grin like a codfish all the time,” growled Myron. “I’d rather look the other way.”

“Huh! Ever have a good look at a codfish, kiddo? He looks as sour as—as you do this minute! Has his mouth all drawn down, you know. Maybe he’s a real merry sort of a guy when he’s in the water, but he sure doesn’t look that way when he’s out of it!”

“Never mind how I look,” said Myron sharply. “And cut out that ‘kiddo.’ I’ve spoken about that often enough.”

“Oh, all right. My error.” Joe winked gravely at the lamp. After a moment he asked: “When’s that furniture of yours coming?”

“I don’t know. It should have been here before this. Why?”

“Nothing. I was just wondering. I was looking at a room on Union Street this afternoon. A fellow’s got it now, but the dame says he’s going to move out next week. I’d have to furnish it myself, of course. I suppose furniture costs a good bit, eh?”

“Some of it,” answered Myron.

“Maybe I could get some second-hand things, though. I wouldn’t need much. The trouble with the dive is that it has only one window and that looks out on a back yard full of washing. There’s something sort of—of dejecting about a lot of clothes on a line. Don’t know why, either. How’d you like the game?”

“All right, I guess.”

“How did I do?”

“You know as well as I, don’t you? I wasn’t watching you particularly.”

“That’s funny,” chuckled Joe. “I thought every one was watching me hard. Anyway, the guy I played opposite was! That was an easy bunch, though. Their backs weren’t on the job at all. Maybe I wouldn’t rip them up if I was their coach! They say next Saturday’s game will be a real one, though. Hope they let me in again. How are you coming on, by the way?”

“I’m not coming on,” said Myron. “I’m getting a bit sick of it, and if they think I’m going to stand much more of their silly nonsense they’re mistaken. I’m all right to coach a lot of greenies, it seems, but after that I can whistle. I wouldn’t mind if I couldn’t play as well as half the fellows that were in the game today.”

“I guess your time’s coming,” said Joe consolingly. “They’ll be weeding them out next week, and when they’ve got rid of about forty of them they’ll be able to see what’s left.”

“If they don’t hurry I won’t be one of those left,” said Myron grumpily, “and that’s flat. I wish I’d stuck to my first scheme and gone to Kenwood. There are fewer fellows there and maybe a chap might have a chance to get somewhere.”

Joe shook his head disapprovingly. “I’m glad you didn’t do that,” he said. “Sort of sounds like treason or something. Say, how’d you happen to change your mind, anyway? Old man kick at it?”

Myron had not gone into particulars regarding his decision to remain at Parkinson but had told Joe that “he guessed he’d try to stick it out.” If Joe had surmised the real reason for the overnight change of heart he had kept the fact to himself. Now Myron hesitated. He didn’t want the real reason known nor did he want to tell Joe a lie. So he answered: “There wasn’t any kick, but as you spoke of going to the village I thought—that is—my father thought——”

“Oh, he knew about that, eh?”

“Who? About what?”

“Your father: about me thinking of getting a room outside.”

“Not exactly, only he thought I might get a place to myself later.”

“You’re a punk liar, Foster,” laughed Joe. “The old man put your little scheme on the blink when he telegraphed to you. Now didn’t he?”

“About that,” confessed Myron a bit sheepishly.

“Sure! I knew it all the time. And he was dead right, too. I’m going to talk sense to you, Foster, whether you get sore or not. The trouble with you is that folks have made you think you’re something a little bit better than the common run of fellows. You’ve always had everything you’ve wanted and you’ve been kept pretty close to the old million dollar hut, and I guess when you were a youngster you didn’t have many fellows to play around with because your folks thought they might be sort of rough and teach you to throw snowballs and wrestle and all those vulgar things. And you’re the only kid, too, aren’t you?”

“Yes,” said Myron loftily, “but if you’ll kindly mind your own business——”

“Shan’t,” said Joe unruffledly. “You listen a minute. What I’m telling you’s for your own good, just like everything nasty. Being an only kid with rich parents and servants to tuck your napkin around your neck and everything is mighty hard on a fellow. It—it mighty near ruins him, Foster! You aren’t exactly a ruin—yet, but you’re sure headed that way. Why, doggone you, why ain’t I good enough to room with? What you got that counts that I ain’t got! Same number of arms and legs, eh? Wear about the same size hat, don’t we? Some fellows would have punched your head if you’d lorded it over ’em the way you did over me that first day. Why——”

“You try it!” said Myron wrathfully.

“Well, you look like a fair scrapper, but I don’t believe you ever had a good fight in your life. Anyway, that’s not the question. What I want to know is where you got your license to act like you’re better than the next guy. Money don’t make you that way, nor classy clothes, nor knowing how to get into a limousine without falling over your feet. Hang it, Foster, you’d be all right if you’d just forget that your old man owns a ship-yard and get it into your bean that other fellows are human even if they wear hand-me-downs and would try to shake hands with the butler! Think it over, old horse, and see if I ain’t right.”

“I don’t have to think it over. You ‘ain’t’ right.” Myron laughed contemptuously. “You think——”

“Yeah, I’m likely to say ‘ain’t’ when I get excited,” replied Joe, “but I’ll get over that in time.”

“You think that just because I wear decent clothes I’m stuck-up,” protested Myron hotly. “I’ve never said or pretended that I am better than—than any one else! As for rooming with you, I explained that. I was to have a room to myself. That was understood.”

“All right,” said Joe soothingly. “But when you found you couldn’t be by yourself why didn’t you face it like a sport! And why turn up your nose as if they’d asked you to bunk in with the Wild Man of Borneo?”

“I’d just as lief,” sputtered Myron. “He wouldn’t be any wilder than you are!”

“Yeah, but wait till you see me in those new duds we ordered,” said Joe pleasantly. “Maybe you’ll be real proud of me then. Wouldn’t wonder if you’d almost speak to me when there’s other fellows looking!”

Myron flushed and his eyes fell. “That’s a rotten thing to say, Dobbins,” he muttered.

“True, though, ain’t—isn’t it?”

“No, it isn’t!”

“My mistake then. Sorry. Well, I’m for the old bed. I suppose I might have kept my mouth shut and minded my own business, like you said, but that mess of talk’s been sort of accumulating ever since we came together and I feel better for getting rid of it, whether you do or not! Sorry if I said anything to hurt your feelings, Foster.”

“Don’t worry. You didn’t. What you say doesn’t cut any ice with me.”

“Then there’s no harm done, eh? Nor good either. It may make you happier to know that I’ve decided to take that room I told you about, though. The guy that’s in it now moves out next Friday and faculty’s given me leave to change. That ought to give you sweet dreams, eh?”

“It will,” replied Myron acidly.

[CHAPTER IX]
MYRON LOSES HIS TEMPER

The next morning Joe was as cheerful and smiling and good-natured as ever, but Myron wasn’t yet ready to forget, and his responses to his room-mate’s overtures were brief and chilling. After breakfast, which on Sundays was a half-hour later, Joe suggested that Myron walk over to the village with him and visit Merriman and see the puppies. Myron wanted to go, for the day was chill and cloudy and generally depressing, but his pride wouldn’t let him and so he answered shortly that he had seen the puppies and he guessed they hadn’t changed much. When Joe had taken himself off Myron felt horribly out-of-sorts and was heartily glad when church time came and, immaculately but soberly attired, he could set forth across the campus. Dinner was at one o’clock, a more hearty repast than most of the fellows needed after a morning spent in comparative idleness. However, no one skimped it. Myron went right through from soup to ice-cream, becoming more and more heavy and gloomy under the effects of an overloaded stomach. He had been placed at a table near the serving-room doors, and, while some of his companions declared that you got your things quicker and hotter by being so close to the source of supplies, Myron disliked having the doors flap back and forth directly behind his back and detested the bursts of noise and aroma that issued forth at such times. Today he resented those annoyances more than ever and found the conversation about him more than ordinarily puerile.

There were a good many third class boys at his table, fellows of fourteen and fifteen, whose deportment was anything but staid. They were much given to playing practical jokes on each other, such as surreptitiously salting a neighbour’s milk or sprinkling pepper in his napkin. And they were not above flicking pellets of bread when the nearest faculty member was not looking. Each table had a “Head” whose duty it was to see that proper decorum was observed. In some cases the Head was one of the faculty, in other cases he was an older boy. The Head at Myron’s table was a second class chap named Rogers, a stoutish, easy-going fellow who was generally so busy eating everything he could lay hands to that he had no time for correcting his charges. It was unfortunate that young Tinkham, the pink-cheeked, sandy-haired little cherub who sat almost opposite Myron, should have selected today for his experiment with the bread pellet. Tinkham had longed for days to see if he could lodge a pellet against Myron’s nose. To Tinkham that nose looked supercilious and contemptuous and seemed to fairly challenge assault. Until now Tinkham had never been able to summon sufficient courage to dare the sacrilege, but today there was a demoralising atmosphere about and so when, having eaten his ice-cream and having nothing further to live for anyway, he saw Myron’s gaze wander toward the further end of the hall Tinkham drew ammunition from under the edge of his butter dish and with an accuracy born of long practice let fly. His aim proved perfect. Myron dropped his spoon and sped a hand to his outraged nose. Before him, perched on the remains of his ice-cream, was the incriminating missile, and of all those who had witnessed the deed only one remained unsmiling, demure and innocent, and that one was the cherubic, fair-haired Tinkham.

Myron lost his temper instantly and completely. “That was you, Tinkham! I saw you!” The latter statement was hardly truthful, but Tinkham didn’t challenge it. He only looked surprised and pained. “You try that again and I’ll box your silly little ears for you! Remember that, too!” Myron flicked the bread pellet disgustedly aside and glowered at the offender.

“Boo!” said one of Tinkham’s friends, and the younger element became convulsed with laughter. At that, Rogers, who had been bending absorbedly over his dessert, looked up.

“Cut that out, fellows,” he remonstrated feebly.

“We’re only laughing,” giggled one of the boys.

“Wake up, Sam,” said Eldredge, who was Rogers’ age and had viewed the proceedings with unconcealed amusement. “You’re missing all the fun. If you didn’t eat so much——”

“If he didn’t eat so much he might keep order at the table,” said Myron.

Rogers was too surprised to reply, but Eldredge took up the cudgels in his behalf. “Oh, don’t be a grouch, Foster,” he sneered. “The kid didn’t hurt you. It was only fun.”

“I don’t like the kind, then,” answered Myron haughtily. “After this he can leave me out of his ‘fun.’”

“Oh, piffle! Come back to earth! If I’d been Tinkham I’d have shied the whole loaf at you. Then you’d have had something to kick about.”

“The something would have been you, then,” retorted Myron.

“Would it? Is that so?” Eldredge glared angrily across the table. “Think you’re man enough to kick me, do you? Why, say——”

“Dry up, Paul!” begged Rogers. “Tasser’s got his eye on you.”

“I won’t dry up,” retorted the insulted Eldredge. Nevertheless he dropped his voice beyond the hearing of the neighbouring instructor. “If that stuck-up mollycoddle thinks he can talk about kicking me and get away with it he’s all wrong, believe me!” The younger boys were listening in open delight and Tinkham was fairly squirming with excitement. “Get that, Foster?”

“I heard you,” replied Myron indifferently.

“You did, eh? Well, any time you feel like——”

“Rogers, what’s wrong at your table?” It was Mr. Tasser’s voice, and Eldredge stopped suddenly and gulped back the rest of his remark.

“I—I—that is, nothing, sir,” stammered the Head. Then, to Eldredge in an imploring whisper: “Shut up, will you?” he begged. “Want to get me in wrong?” Eldredge muttered and shot venomous looks at Myron while the youngsters sighed their disappointment. Myron folded his napkin and arose leisurely, aware of the unsympathetic regard of his companions, and walked out. In the corridor he waited for a minute or two. He had no desire to carry matters any further with Paul Eldredge, but he felt that if he hurried away that youth might misconstrue the action. However, Eldredge didn’t appear and so Myron went across to Sohmer, still sore and irritated, to find an empty study. Eldredge’s failure to follow Myron out of the dining hall had been due entirely to discretion. With Mr. Tasser’s penetrant and suspicious gaze on him, he decided that it would be wise to avoid all seeming interest in Myron.

Joe failed to return to the room, and after trying to do some studying and finding that he simply couldn’t keep his mind on his task, Myron pulled a cap on and sallied forth again. It was misting by then, and a chilling suggestion of autumn was in the air. When he had mooned along the country road that led toward Cumner for a mile or so without finding anything of interest he turned back toward the town. A hot chocolate in a corner drug store restored his spirits somewhat and, having no better place to go, he crossed the railroad and made his way through the dreary quarter that held the residence of Merriman. He didn’t suppose Merriman would be in, but it was something to do. Recalling former instructions, he didn’t bother to ring the bell this time, but opened the door and climbed the dark stairway to the second floor. That Merriman was in became known to him before he had groped his way to the room, for from beyond the closed portal came the sound of voices. For a moment Myron hesitated. He hadn’t bargained on finding visitors there. But the loneliness of Number 17 Sohmer on this Sunday afternoon decided him, and he knocked. Merriman’s voice bade him enter and he opened the door on a surprising scene.

On the decrepit window-seat reclined Joe Dobbins. Close by, in the room’s one armchair, with his feet on a second chair, was Merriman. Between the two was a corner of the deal table, dragged from its accustomed place, and on the table was the remains of a meal: some greasy plates, a coffee pot, cups, bits of bread, about a third of a pie, a half-eaten banana, a jar of milk. The room, in spite of a wide-open window, smelled of sausages. On Joe’s chest reposed Tess, the terrier, evidently too full of food and contentment to bark, and in Merriman’s lap was a squirming bunch of puppies.

“Come in, Foster,” called the host genially. “Pardon me if I don’t get up, but just now I am weighted with family cares. Find a chair and draw up to our cosy circle. Have you had food? There’s some pie left, and I can heat some coffee for you in a second.”

“I’ve had dinner, thanks, a good while ago.” He carefully lifted a dozen or so books from a chair and took it across to the window. He felt rather intrusive. And there was Joe grinning at him from the seat, and he was supposed to have a grouch against Joe.

“Well, have a piece of pie, won’t you?” begged Merriman hospitably. “Sure? We were sort of late with our feed. What time is it, anyway? Great Scott, Dobbins, it’s nearly four! How long have we been sitting here?”

“I’ve been here ever since I worried down that last piece of pie,” said Joe, “and I guess that was about an hour and a half ago. You ought to have showed up earlier, Foster. You missed a swell feed!”

“Sausages and potatoes and pie,” laughed Merriman. “Still, we managed to nearly kill ourselves: at least, I did.” Joe groaned and shifted the terrier to a new position. “Been for a walk, Foster?”

“Yes. It’s a rotten day, isn’t it?”

“Is it?” Merriman glanced through the window in faint surprise. “I hadn’t noticed. Sort of cloudy I see. By the way, I’ve sold one of these little beggars.”

“Have you? They’ve got their eyes open, haven’t they?”

“Sort of half open,” chuckled Merriman. “Maybe they’re too fat to open them any wider. This is the one that’s sold. His name is—what was it you named him, Dobbins?”

“Zephaniah,” answered Joe gravely, “Zephaniah Q. Dobbins.”

“What’s the Q for?” laughed Merriman.

“Haven’t decided yet. I just put that in for the sound. You see, Foster, I’m calling him Zephaniah after an old codger who used to live near us up at Hecker’s Falls, Maine. Zephaniah Binney was his name. He used to be a cook in the logging camps, but he got so fat tasting the things he cooked that he had to quit. After that he used to sit in front of his shack all day, tilted back in a chair, and look for work.”

“Look for work?” laughed Merriman.

“Yeah, he was always on the look-out for a job. ’Most strained his eyes looking. But somehow he never found one; leastways, he hadn’t when I saw him last. Funny old codger. Warren Wilson, who was postmaster and ran the store and one thing and another, used to bring the Bangor paper to Zeph every day and Zeph would study the advertisements mighty carefully. Guess he knew more about the Bangor labour market than any man alive. ‘I was readin’ where one o’ them big dry-goods houses is wantin’ a sales manager,’ Zeph would tell you. ‘It don’t say how much they’re willin’ to pay, though. If I knew that I’d certain’y communicate with ’em, I would so. Maybe they’ll make mention o’ the salary tomorrow. I’ll just wait an’ see.’”

“And he’s still waiting?” chuckled Merriman.

“As far as I know.”

“What does he live on?” asked Myron. “Has he got money saved?”

“No, he’s got something better; he’s got an up-and-coming wife who works just as hard as Zeph—looks. She’s a wonderful woman, too, Mrs. Binney is. She’s lived with Zeph thirty years or more and she ain’t—hasn’t found him out yet. Or, if she has, she don’t let on. If you ask her has Zeph got a job yet she’ll tell you, ‘No, not yet, but he’s considerin’ acceptin’ a position with a firm o’ commission merchants down to Boston.’ And all the considering Zeph has done is read an advertisement in the Bangor paper where it says the Boston folks want a few carloads of potatoes!”

“It’s sort of tough on the puppy, though,” murmured Myron.

“Well, there’s a strong resemblance between him and Zephaniah,” said Joe. “I’ve been watching him. He doesn’t push and shove for his food like the rest of them. He just waits, and first thing you know he’s getting the best there is. If that ain’t like Zeph I’ll eat my hat.”

“Where are you going to keep him?” inquired Myron.

“In my room—when I get it. He won’t want any better than I have, I guess. I don’t suppose he’s going to kick because there isn’t much of a view.”

Merriman asked about the new quarters and Joe supplied a drily humorous description of them. The room began to grow dark and the boy’s faces became only lighter blurs in the twilight. Tess went to sleep and snored loudly. Myron listened more than he talked, conscious of the comfortable, home-like atmosphere of the queer, illy-furnished room and putting off from minute to minute the return to school. But at last the town clock struck six and Joe lifted the terrier from his stomach, in spite of protests, and swung his feet to the floor.

“I’ve got to be going,” he announced. “Haven’t peeked into a book since Friday.” He yawned cavernously. “You coming along, Foster?”

“Yes, I guess so.” Myron was glad to be asked, but he was careful to keep any trace of cordiality from his voice.

“Well, come again,” said Merriman heartily. “Both of you. Sunday’s an off-day with me and you’ll usually find me in about noon.”

“Me? I’ll be back,” declared Joe. “I haven’t enjoyed a meal since I left home like I enjoyed that dinner. Brother, you sure can cook sausages!”

“I like that guy,” said Joe when he and Myron were traversing the poorly-lighted street that led toward school. “He don’t have any too easy a time of it, either, Foster.”

“No, I guess coaching isn’t much fun,” Myron agreed.

“Well, he told me he liked it. Maybe he has to. He says he’s put himself clean through school that way. His father and mother are both dead and the only kin he’s got is an old aunt who lives out West somewhere. He says she’s got a right smart lot of money, but the only thing she ever does for him is send him six handkerchiefs every Christmas. Says it’s a big help, though, because he doesn’t have to buy any. He’s a cheerful guy, all right, and the fellows hit on a swell name for him.”

“What’s that?” asked Myron.

“Why, his name is Andrew Merriman, you know, and so they call him ‘Merry Andrew.’ Cute, ain’t it? He works hard every summer, too. Last summer he was a waiter at a hotel and did some tutoring besides. He’s a hustler. Doggone it, Foster, you’ve got to hand it to a guy like that!”

“Yes,” Myron agreed. Mentally he wondered that Merriman didn’t choose a less menial task than waiting on table. It seemed rather demeaning, he thought. Joe was silent until they had reached the end of School Street and were entering the campus gate. Then:

“Say, I’d like to do something for him,” he said earnestly. “Only I suppose he wouldn’t let me.”

“Do something? What do you mean?” asked Myron.

“Well, help him along somehow. Fix it so’s he wouldn’t have to work all the time like he does. The guy’s got a great bean on him. Bet you he knows more than the Principal and the rest of the faculty put together. A fellow like that ought to be able to go ahead and—and develop himself. See what I mean? He’s too—too valuable to waste his time serving soup and fish in a summer hotel. If I did it it wouldn’t hurt none, but he’s different. If I had my way I’d fix him up in a couple of nice rooms with plenty of books and things and tell him to go to it.”

“But I don’t just see how you could do anything much for him,” said Myron.

“No, I guess he wouldn’t let me.”

“Maybe not. Anyway, it would take a good deal of money, wouldn’t it?”

“Yeah, I guess so. Well, I’m just talking. No harm in that, eh? I’m not going over to supper. I couldn’t eat anything more if I was paid for it. See you later, kiddo.”

For once Myron failed to resent that form of address. In fact, he scarcely noticed it. Going across to Alumni Hall, he found himself looking forward with something akin to dismay to the time when Dobbins should have left him to the undisputed possession of Number 17!

[CHAPTER X]
THE CHALLENGE

Myron had quite forgotten Paul Eldredge and the incident of the bread pellet and only remembered when he seated himself at table and caught Eldredge’s unfriendly stare. As he was late, Eldredge and the others were nearly through the rather modest repast, and smiles and whispers across the board appraised him of the unpleasant fact that he was suspected of having delayed his arrival in order to avoid encountering his table companions. Being far from the truth, this displeased him greatly and as a result he bore himself more haughtily than ever, thereby increasing the disfavour into which he had fallen at noon. Young Tinkham raised a snigger amongst his cronies by ostentatiously rolling a bit of biscuit into a pellet, but he didn’t throw it. Presently Myron was left alone, to his satisfaction, Eldredge passing him with a challenging look that would have given him cause for thought had he seen it. At the moment, however, Myron was looking into the bottom of his cup and so had no forewarning of what was to occur.

If Eldredge was in the corridor when he came out ten minutes later Myron didn’t see him. It was not until he was half-way along the walk toward Sohmer that he again recalled Eldredge’s existence. Then he heard his name spoken and turned. Two fellows came toward him, the lights of Goss Hall behind them so that it was not until they had reached him that he recognised them as Eldredge and Rogers. It was Eldredge who had called and who now spoke.

“Been looking for you ever since dinner, Foster,” said Eldredge accusingly. “Kept sort of scarce, haven’t you?”

Rogers laughed softly, nervously. Myron stiffened.

“You couldn’t have looked very hard, Eldredge. I was in my room——”

“Oh, no you weren’t!” interrupted Eldredge triumphantly. “I looked there.”

“Until half-past three—or three.”

“Or half-past two—or two,” mocked the other.

“Well, what of it?” asked Myron coldly. He knew now that Eldredge intended trouble. “What did you want me for?”

“Oh, nothing much. I just wanted to give you something.”

“I don’t want it, thanks,” replied Myron. He turned to go on, but Eldredge stepped in front of him.

“Don’t, eh? Wait till you know what it is, Mister Smug!” Eldredge’s arm shot out. Although he had not guessed the other’s intention, Myron caught sight of the movement and instinctively stepped back. The blow, aimed at his face, landed lightly on his chest. Prompted by a rage as sudden as Eldredge’s attack, Myron’s right hand swept swiftly up from his side and caught his opponent fairly on the side of the face with open palm. The sound of the slap and Eldredge’s snarl of mingled surprise and pain came close together. Staggered by the blow, Eldredge fell back a pace. Then he sprang forward again.

“You—you——” he stammered wildly.

But Rogers, stout and unwieldy, threw himself between in a panic of entreaty. “Don’t, Paul! Not here! Some one’s coming! You’ll get the very dickens! You crazy dub, will you quit? Paul——”

“No, I won’t!” grunted Eldredge, trying to shove Rogers aside. “He can’t hit me and get away with it! I’ll show him——”

“Let him alone,” said Myron.

“No! Aw, quit, Paul! Honest, some one’s coming down the line. It won’t hurt you to wait a minute, will it?” Rogers was panting now from the double exertion of being a human barrier and a suppliant. But he won, for Eldredge, almost as angry with his friend for delaying revenge as with his enemy, but utterly unable to get past him, stopped his efforts in despair.

“What do you mean, wait a minute?” he demanded, alternately glaring at Rogers and Myron.

“Well, wait until tomorrow,” panted Rogers. “You know what’ll happen if you fight here. Do it regular, Paul.”

“Tomorrow! Where’ll he be by that time?” asked Eldredge scathingly.

“Shut up!” cautioned Rogers hoarsely. “You’ll have a crowd here in a minute!” Already a group of three fellows had paused a little way off and were peering curiously through the darkness. “Listen, will you? You fellows can settle this just as well tomorrow as you can now. Fix it up for the brickyard at—at what time do you say, Foster?”

“Any time he likes!” answered Myron obligingly. Then, remembering that there were such things as recitations, he added: “Before breakfast: say a quarter to seven.”

“You won’t want any breakfast when I get through with you,” growled Eldredge.

“That all right for you, Paul?” asked Rogers. By this time he was leading the others by force of example along the walk.

“Sure.”

“Good! A quarter to seven, then, at the brickyard. Come on, Paul. So long, Foster!”

Myron made no answer as he strode on toward Sohmer. His pulses were still pounding, although he had managed to control his voice fairly well, and he was experiencing a sort of breathlessness that was novel and not altogether unpleasant. But, to be truthful, contemplation of tomorrow morning’s engagement with Eldredge at the brickyard, wherever that might be, did not fill him with unalloyed bliss. In fact, as excitement dwindled something very much like nervousness took its place. Myron was not a coward, but, as he climbed the stairs in Sohmer, he found himself wishing that he had kept his temper and his tongue under control yesterday noon!

Joe Dobbins, with both lean, sinewy hands desperately clutching his tousled hair, was bent over a book at the study table. Joe’s method of studying was almost spectacular. First he removed his coat, then his collar and tie. After that he seated himself on the edge of his chair, twined his ankles about the legs of it, tilted it forward until his elbows were on the table, got a fine, firm grip on his hair with each hand, took a long agonised breath—and plunged in! Studying was just as hard for him as it looked, and it is greatly to his credit that he succeeded at it as well as he did. Just now he looked up at Myron’s entrance. For a moment he stared vacantly. Then his hands dropped from his head, the chair thumped back into normal position and he came out of his trance.

“Hello,” he said vaguely.

“Latin?” asked Myron.

“Math,” was the sad response. Then, sensing something unusual about his room-mate, he asked: “What’s up?”

“Nothing. Why?”

“You look like some one had dropped a firecracker down your neck, or something. What’s disturbed your wonted calm? Say, how’s that? ‘Wonted calm!’ Gee, that’s going some, ain’t it? I mean, is it not?”

“Great,” said Myron absently. He went into the bedroom and methodically changed coat and vest for a grey house jacket. When he emerged Joe was still unsatisfied.

“Going to study?” asked the latter.

“Yes—no—I don’t know. I ought to.” But Myron seated himself at the window instead of at the table and took one leg into his interlaced hands. Joe watched him solicitously. After a minute Myron asked with elaborate unconcern: “Did you ever fight any one, Dobbins?”

“Me?” Joe chuckled. “Well, I’ve been in a couple of scraps in my time. Why?”

“Just wondered. What—how do you go at it?”

“Me?” Joe leaned precariously back in his chair. “Well, I ain’t got but one rule, Foster, and that’s: Hit ’em first and often.”

“Oh! I—I suppose boxing is—quite an art.”

“Don’t know much about boxing, kiddo. Where I come from they don’t go in for rules and regulations. When you fight—you fight: and about the only thing that’s barred is kicking the other fellow in the head when he’s down! A real earnest scrap between a couple of lumber-jacks is about the nearest thing to battle, murder and sudden death that you’re likely to see outside the movies!”

“I didn’t mean that sort of fighting,” said Myron distastefully. “Fellows at—well, say, at school don’t fight like that, of course.”

“No, I don’t suppose so. I guess they stick to their fists. Anyway, they did where I went to school. We used to have some lively little scraps, too,” added Joe with a reminiscent chuckle. “I remember—But, say, what’s your trouble, Foster? Why are you so interested in fighting?”

“Oh, I was just wondering,” answered Myron evasively.

“Yeah, I know all about that. Who you been fighting?”

“No one.”

“Who you going to fight?”

“I haven’t said I was going to fight, have I? I was just asking about it. Maybe I might have to fight some time, and——”

“Sure, that’s so. You might. You can’t ever tell, can you?” Joe picked up a pencil and beat a thoughtful tattoo on the blotter for a moment. Then: “Who is he? Do I know him?” he asked.

“Know who?” faltered Myron.

“This guy that’s after you. Come on, kiddo, open up! Come across! Let’s hear the story.”

So finally Myron told the whole thing, secretly very glad to do it, and Joe listened silently, save for an occasional grunt. When Myron had finished Joe asked: “So that’s it, eh? Tomorrow morning at a quarter to seven at the brickyard. Where’s this brickyard located?”

“I don’t know. I must ask some one.”

“Yeah. Now tell me this, kid—I mean Foster: What do you know about fighting?”

“Not much,” owned Myron ruefully. “I saw a couple of fellows at high school fight once, but that’s about all.”

“Never fought yourself?”

Myron shook his head almost apologetically. “No, I never had occasion to.”

Joe snorted. “You mean you never had a chance to find an occasion,” he said derisively. “You were kept tied up to the grand piano in the drawing-room, I guess. Think of a husky guy like you getting to be seventeen years old and never having any fun at all! Gee, it’s criminal! Your folks have got a lot to answer for, Foster, believe me! Here, stand up here and put your fists up and show me what you know—or don’t know.”

Myron obeyed and faced the other awkwardly. Joe groaned.

“Gee, ain’t you the poor fish? Stick that foot out so you can move about. That’s it. Now I’m going to tap you on the shoulder, the left shoulder. Don’t let me!” But Myron did let him, although he thrashed both his arms about fearsomely. “Rotten! Watch me, not my hands. Now look out for your face!”

A minute later Joe dropped his hands, shook his head and leaned dejectedly against a corner of the table. “It’s no use, kiddo, it’s no use! You’ll be the lamb going to the slaughter tomorrow. Ain’t any one ever taken the least interest in your education? What are you going to do when that Eldredge guy comes at you?”

Myron smiled wanly. “I guess I’ll just have to do the best I can,” he said. “Maybe he isn’t much better than I am.”

“Don’t kid yourself. When a guy picks a quarrel the way he did it means he knows a bit. Still, at that——” Joe stopped and stared thoughtfully at the wall. Then: “What’s his full name?” he asked.

“Paul Eldredge is all I know of it.”

“That’ll do. I’ll be back in a few minutes.” Joe picked up his cap and made for the door. “Nothing like knowing what you’re up against,” he said. “Sit tight, Brother, and leave this to me. If I was you I’d do a bit of studying, eh?”

Myron followed the advice. Just at first it was hard to get his mind on lessons, for his thoughts kept recurring to the coming encounter and when they did he squirmed uneasily in his chair and felt a kind of tingling sensation at the end of his spine. On the football field Myron had often taken blows and given them in the excitement of the game. He had had some hard knocks and had seen plenty of rough playing. He couldn’t remember ever having been afraid of an opponent, although he had more than once entered a contest with the knowledge that the enemy was “laying for him.” But, somehow, this was different. What resentment he had felt against Paul Eldredge had passed, and so even the spur of anger was lacking. He would have to stand up there tomorrow morning and be knocked around at Eldredge’s pleasure, it seemed, for no very good reason that he could think of. It was rather silly, when you came to consider it calmly. Eldredge had been rude to him, he had been rude to Eldredge, Eldredge had struck him, he had struck Eldredge. Now when things were nicely evened up he must take a licking! Well, he supposed there was no way out of it short of acting like a coward. He would have to take what was coming to him, getting off as easily as he could, and try to like it! Well, he had taken punishment before and could again. Having reached that conclusion, he managed to get his thoughts back to his studies and was going very well when Joe returned.

[CHAPTER XI]
MYRON MISSES AN ENGAGEMENT

“Well, I’ve got his number,” announced Joe, discarding his cap and dropping into a chair. “He’s a scrapper. He’s had three or four mix-ups since he has been here, usually, as near as I can make out, with fellows who didn’t know much fighting. He’s got a quick temper and is ugly when he’s started. He’s a second class fellow and plays hockey and baseball. Had a fuss with the baseball coach last spring and was laid off for awhile. Apologised and got back again finally. I didn’t hear any one say he was liked much. The main thing, though, is that he can scrap. Keith says he’s quite a foxy youth with his fists; says he thinks he’s taken lessons. So now we know where we are, eh?”

“Yes, it seems so,” answered Myron. “Well, there’s no use talking about it, is there? Did you find out where this brickyard is?”

“Yeah, it’s just across the street at the far side of the campus, back from the road a bit. I’ve been thinking, Foster. There’s no sense in you going up against a fellow who knows how to fight, is there?”

“No, but it doesn’t seem to be a question of sense,” replied Myron, smiling.

“What I mean is, it isn’t a fair proposition for a chap who can’t even keep his guard up to try to fight a guy who knows all the ropes. Might as well expect one of Merriman’s puppies to fight a bull-dog. That’s so, ain’t it?”

“Well, it isn’t quite that bad,” said Myron. “At least, I hope not!”

“Mighty near. So here’s my plan, kiddo. You stay right in your downy couch tomorrow morning and I’ll see this guy Eldredge myself.”

“What?”

“Sure! Why not? He wants a scrap, don’t he? Well, he wouldn’t get any if you were to go. It wouldn’t be worth his trouble getting out of bed. But me, I can show him a real good time, likely. I don’t say I can lick him, for they tell me he’s a right shifty guy and has some punch, but I can keep him interested until he’s ready to call it a day. Besides, I ain’t had a real good scrap since last winter and I’m getting soft. So that’s what we’ll do, eh?”

Myron laughed. Then, perplexedly, he asked: “You aren’t in earnest, Dobbins?”

“Sure, I’m in earnest? What’s the joke?”

“I guess it would be on Eldredge,” chuckled Myron.

“That’s so.” Joe smiled too. “He will be a bit surprised, won’t he? Maybe he will be peeved, too. I wouldn’t wonder. Well, that’s nothing in our young lives, eh? We’re doing the best we can for him.”

“But—but do you really think I’d agree to that?” asked Myron. “You’re joking, of course!”

“What do you mean, joking?” demanded the other indignantly. “And why wouldn’t you agree? Ain’t it the sensible thing to do?”

“Maybe, but I can’t do it, of course, Dobbins. You must see that. Why, hang it, if I challenge another fellow to fight I don’t expect him to send a substitute!”

“What you expect don’t cut any ice, kiddo. If the guy you challenge can’t fight a little bit he’s a plain idiot to let you whang him around, ain’t he? And if he knows another guy who doesn’t mind taking his place why ain’t it all right and fair for him to send him along? Tell me those!”

“Why, because—because it isn’t!” answered Myron impatiently. “Eldredge hasn’t anything against you. His quarrel is with me. What would he say about me if I stayed away and let you go instead?”

“Him? What could he say? I’ll tell him you’re no scrapper. That’ll fix that in his mind, won’t it? Mind you, Foster, I ain’t saying he’s going to be pleased at running up against a guy who knows a thing or two about the game, but it don’t seem to me that we need to worry about whether he’s pleased or not. He wants a scrap and we’re giving him one. That’s enough, ain’t it?”

“It’s the craziest thing I ever heard of,” said Myron. “Of course, I’m awfully much obliged, Dobbins. I appreciate it, honest. I don’t know why you should offer to do it, either. But it’s absolutely out of the question. So let’s not talk about it any more.”

Joe frowned, opened his mouth, closed it again without speaking and fell to studying his hands. After a moment Myron asked: “What do I do when I get there, Dobbins? Do we shake hands or—or just start in?”

“Start in,” answered the other absently. “Look here, Foster,” he continued earnestly, “you’re going to act like a plumb fool. Why, that guy’ll paste you all over your face and leave you looking like a raw beefsteak! Then faculty’ll want to know what you’ve been doing and there’ll be all sorts of trouble on tap. What you going to do when he begins lamming you?”

Myron shrugged. “Stand him off the best way I can. Lamm him back if I can. Maybe I’ll get on to the game after awhile. I’m going to try. I thought maybe you could show me a few things tonight, just so’s I wouldn’t look too green tomorrow. It isn’t late, is it?”

“No, it isn’t late.” Joe brightened perceptibly for an instant, but then his face fell again and he shook his head. “It wouldn’t be any use, kiddo. You’d forget it all in the morning. I guess if you won’t do like I said the best thing’ll be to let him knock you down as soon as possible. When you’re down, stay down. If he asks have you had enough, you tell him yes. Then you can shake hands and get through without getting all beat up.”

“Is that what you’d do?” asked Myron sharply.

“Me? Well, I—I don’t know as I would, just.”

“Then why should you think I’d do it? Who told you I was a coward? I can’t fight, and I know it, but I don’t intend to lie down!”

“Whoa, Bill! I ain’t said you were a coward. I know better, of course. If you were a coward you’d try to squirm out of meeting the fellow, wouldn’t you? All right, have it your own way, kiddo. Only don’t worry about it, see? You get a good sleep and leave tomorrow look after itself.”

“Thanks. I’m going to do that, Dobbins. Guess I’ll turn in now and dream I’m Jess Willard or one of those guys—fellows. Are you going to study some more?”

Joe nodded. “Yeah, I’m going to study some. Good night.”

“Good night,” answered Myron. A few minutes later he spoke again from the bedroom. “I say, Dobbins!”

“Yeah?”

“I’m awfully much obliged. You’ve been mighty kind, you know.”

“That’s all right, kiddo,” growled Dobbins. “Go to sleep.”

Whether Myron dreamed that he was a prizefighter, or dreamed at all, he didn’t remember when he awoke. That he had slept restfully, however, he realised the instant he was in possession of his faculties. He told himself that he felt fine. And when, a second later, he remembered the engagement at the brickyard the empty feeling at the pit of his stomach lasted but a moment. He turned his head and glanced at the clock on top of his dresser. Then he stared at it. It said twenty-eight minutes after six! It wasn’t like that clock to go wrong. It had been all right last evening when he had wound it, too. Suppose it was still right! Suppose he had overslept! He looked quickly at Joe’s bed. It was empty. Great Scott! He’d have to hurry if he was to get to that brickyard in seventeen minutes! He started to throw the covers aside, but he didn’t. He couldn’t! He couldn’t move his arm! Why, he couldn’t move any part of him except his head! Something awful had happened to him! Fright gripped him and in a panic he strove to get command of his limbs. Horrible thoughts of paralysis came to him. The bed creaked, but he remained flat on his back! And then it dawned on him that the reason he couldn’t move was because he was tied down!

For a moment he was so relieved to discover that the fault was not with him that he didn’t realise his situation. It was only when he remembered the time again that he understood. This was Joe Dobbins’ doing! Joe had tied him down to his bed, though how he had done it without awakening him Myron couldn’t imagine, and had himself gone to meet Eldredge! Surprise gave way to anger and mortification. What would Eldredge think of him? All Joe’s explanations would fail to convince Eldredge that Myron had not purposely stayed away. Of all the crazy, meddlesome fools in the world, Dobbins was the craziest! Wait until he found him! Wait until he told him what he thought of him! Wait——

But just then Myron realised that waiting was the one thing he couldn’t afford. The clock had ticked off two minutes of the precious time remaining to him and the long hand was moving past the half-hour already. He studied his predicament. Joe had, it appeared, used his own sheets and quilt and, probably, other things as well, and Myron was as securely fastened down as Gulliver by the Lilliputians! He could move each leg about an inch and each arm the same. By arching his back he could lift his body just off the bed: something, possibly a sheet, crossed his chest and was tied fast to the side rails. He squirmed until he was exhausted, and the only apparent result was to give himself the fraction of an inch more freedom. He subsided, panting, and his anger found room for grudging admiration of Joe’s work. How that idiot had managed to swathe and bind him as he had done without waking him up was both a marvel and a mystery!

“Gee,” muttered Myron, “I knew I was a sound sleeper, but——”

Words failed him. Presently, despairing of success, he tried to free his right hand. Something that felt like a strap—he discovered afterwards that it was one of his neckties—was wound about the wrist, and his efforts were of no avail. The other hand was quite as securely tied. Tugging his feet against similar bonds was equally unprofitable. When the hands of the clock on the dresser indicated seventeen minutes to seven he gave up and tried to find consolation in arranging the eloquent remarks he meant to deliver to Joe Dobbins when that offensive youth returned.

Meanwhile, history was in the making on the trampled field of battle.

At a few minutes before the half-hour after six, a large, wide-shouldered youth attired in a pair of old trousers, a faded brown sweater that lacked part of one sleeve and a cloth cap of a violent green-and-brown plaid might have been seen ambling leisurely across the campus in the direction of the West Gate. In fact, he was seen, for from an open window on the front of Leonard Hall a pyjama-clad boy thrust his head forth and hailed softly.

“Hi, Joe! Joe Dobbins!” he called.

Joe paused and searched the front of the building until a spot of pale lavender against the expanse of sunlit brick supplied the clue. Then: “Hello, Keith,” he answered. “Can’t you sleep?”

Leighton Keith chuckled. “Where are you going?” he asked.

“Just for a stroll,” replied Joe carelessly.

“Wait a minute and I’ll come along.”

Joe shook his head. “Got a date, Keith, with a guy named Eldredge.”

Keith nodded and waved, but, after Joe had passed from sight around the corner of the building, he pursed his lips thoughtfully and stared out into the early morning world. Gradually a smile curved his mouth. “Paul Eldredge,” he murmured. “Guess we’ll look into this.” He donned a dressing-gown and passed into the corridor and along it until he reached a window that overlooked Linden Street. Joe was just sauntering through the gate, hands in pockets, nonchalance expressed in every motion. But Keith noted with satisfaction that he turned to the right into Apple Street and presently crossed that thoroughfare and disappeared into the lane that led toward the abandoned brickyard. Keith whistled expressively if subduedly and went quickly back to his room and aroused Harry Cater by the simple method of pulling the clothes from him. “Katie,” as he was called, groaned, clutched ineffectually for the bedding and opened one eye.

“Wake up, Katie,” said Keith. “Joe Dobbins has a scrap on with Eldredge at the brickyard. Come on!”

“Howjuno?” muttered Katie.

“He just told me.” That was near enough the truth, Keith considered. Katie opened the other eye, stared around the room and slung one foot over the edge of the bed. “All right,” he said briskly. “Wait till I get a shower and I’ll be with you.”

“Shower? Nothing doing!” Keith was piling rapidly into his clothes. “There isn’t time. This is something a little bit choice, old man, and we don’t want to miss it. Get a move on!”

[CHAPTER XII]
ELDREDGE REJECTS A SUBSTITUTE

Joe made his leisurely way along the lane, his feet rustling the leaves that littered the grassy path. There had been a frost during the night and in shaded places it still glistened. When he had left the lane and was making his way between the old tumbledown shed with its piles of crumbling bricks and one of the clay pits he saw that there was a skim of ice on the water below him. It was a morning that induced a fine feeling of well-being, that made the blood course quickly and would have put a song on Joe’s lips had he been able to sing a note. As it was, he whistled instead.

Ahead of him was a smallish shed, perhaps at one time the office. Some rusted barrows and pieces of machinery lay about it. As it presented the only place of concealment in sight, Joe concluded that it was the place of appointment. Eldredge, however, had not arrived. Joe made sure of that by looking on all sides of the building and peering into the interior through a paneless window. So he seated himself in the sunlight and philosophically waited.

Some ten minutes passed and then he heard footsteps and presently around the corner appeared Paul Eldredge and Sam Rogers. Joe frowned. Eldredge shouldn’t have brought a second fellow without telling Myron of his intention. The newcomers stopped in surprise when they saw Joe, and after an instant Eldredge said: “Hello! Have you seen—Is Foster here?”

“Hello,” replied Joe. “Foster? No, he isn’t coming.”

“Isn’t coming!” exclaimed Eldredge. Then he laughed. “What do you know about that? What did I tell you, Sam?”

Rogers nodded. “I know. You said he wouldn’t.”

“Fact is,” said Joe, “he can’t.”

“Can’t, eh? I suppose he’s sick,” sneered Eldredge.

Joe shook his head gently and pulled himself to his feet. “No, he ain’t sick, he’s—he’s confined to his bed.” He chuckled, much to the mystification of the others. Eldredge scowled.

“What is this, a silly joke?” he demanded peevishly.

“No, oh, no, it ain’t any joke,” answered Joe gravely. “It’s this way, Eldredge. Foster’s no scrapper. Doesn’t know the first thing about it. Of course you didn’t know that when you arranged this party. You wanted a nice little fight. Foster couldn’t give it to you. Why, he doesn’t know how to even block. You wouldn’t have had any sport at all. It would have been all over in a wag of a duck’s tail. I told him that, but he wouldn’t see it. I said: ‘This guy Eldredge wants a scrap, kiddo. He doesn’t want to get up at that time of day just to see you topple over every time he reaches out. Give him a chance,’ I said. ‘You stay in bed and I’ll take the job off your hands.’ Course, I’m no professional, Eldredge, but I know enough to give you a bit of fun. But Foster wouldn’t see it. Insisted that he had to come himself.”

“Say, for the love of Mike,” broke in Eldredge, “are you crazy?”

“Me? No, I don’t believe so,” answered Joe mildly. “Anyway, I couldn’t get him to look at it right, and so this morning I just woke up a bit early and tied him up in bed.” He chuckled. “I’ll bet he’s spouting blue murder right now!”

“That’s a likely yarn!” sneered Eldredge. “Tied up in bed! Yes, he is—not! He got you to come and tell that story to save his face!”

“Well, I sort of came to save his face,” answered Joe genially, “but not just the way you mean: and he didn’t have anything to do with it. He’s tied right down to his bed this minute.”

“If he is,” said Rogers, “he helped do it.”

“No.” Joe shook his head patiently. “He was asleep. I’d like you guys to believe that. It always sort of disgruntles me when folks don’t believe what I tell ’em, and I’m likely to get real mad.”

Rogers blinked. “Well—well, then there’s nothing doing, Paul,” he said very mildly.

“Nothing doing?” echoed Joe in surprise. “What do you mean, nothing doing? Ain’t I here? Sure, there’s something doing. Him and me—I mean he and I are going to have a real good time.”

“We are not,” replied Eldredge disgustedly. “It’s the plainest sort of a frame-up, Sam. I knew all along Foster didn’t have any sand. I told you he’d duck.”

“Say, you must have got me wrong,” said Joe earnestly. “Foster wanted to come, but I wouldn’t let him. It wasn’t fair to him or you, kiddo. Don’t you see? He’d have got all messed up and you’d have been downright disappointed. That’s why I took it over. You and me are about of a size and weight and I’ll bet we can have a right good scrap.”

“I don’t care to fight you,” said Eldredge disdainfully. “Why should I? I don’t even know you!”

“Well, I don’t know you, either,” replied Joe calmly. “So we’re all-square there, eh? Listen, Brother: if you’re holding back on my account, don’t do it. I don’t mind a scrap. Fact is, I’d be mighty disappointed if I didn’t have it, after coming away over here like this. And so would you, of course. You’re like me; get sort of low-spirited if you don’t have a little set-to now and then. Ain’t that right?”

Eldredge was viewing Joe in mingled astonishment and uneasiness. This big, raw-boned chap didn’t look good to him as an opponent. His arms were discouragingly long and the shoulders hinted at a muscular development quite unusual. Also, there was a quiet gleam in the greenish-grey eyes that made Eldredge feel a bit creepy along his spine. He laughed nervously.

“Don’t be a chump,” he begged. “Of course I’m not going to fight you. I had a row with Foster, but if you say he doesn’t know how to fight, why, all right. We’ll call it off. I don’t want to fight any fellow that’s no match for me——”

“That’s just what I told him,” said Joe delightedly. “I said, ‘That guy’s going to be tickled to death when I show up instead of you.’”

“Come on,” said Rogers, tugging at his friend’s sleeve.

“Of course,” went on Eldredge, “if Foster wants to go on with it later, I’m ready for him, but—but as far as I’m concerned I’m willing to call quits.”

“Atta boy!” said Joe approvingly. “Well, now that’s settled and you and me can go ahead.” Joe began to peel off his sweater. Eldredge frowned and shot an anxious look at Rogers.

“I’ve told you I wouldn’t fight you,” he said, “and I won’t.”

“Why not?” demanded Joe. “Ain’t I good enough for you? Trying to insult me, eh?” he scowled darkly. “Is that it?”

“Of course not! I haven’t any row with you. Besides, it’s nearly time for chapel and I don’t intend to get in wrong at the Office just to please you!”

“That don’t go, kiddo. I’ve offered to fight you and you’ve insulted me by refusing. That’s enough. Now you pull that coat off and stand up here.”

“You’re crazy! I won’t be forced into a fight like this. You haven’t any right to——”

Joe gave a howl. “Haven’t any rights, haven’t I? We’ll see. No guy can tell me I haven’t any rights and not fight! Now then, come on!”

“I said you hadn’t any right to make me fight,” protested Eldredge. “You’re just——”

“I heard you!” answered Joe ominously. “Don’t repeat it! It’s something no guy can say to me and not answer for! By jiminy, you’ve got a cheek! No rights, eh? Ain’t I a free-born American citizen?” Joe slung his sweater aside, slipped his suspenders down and knotted them about his waist and advanced on the embarrassed enemy. “What about the Declaration of Independence?” he demanded wrathfully.

“You know well enough what I mean,” declared Eldredge somewhat shrilly. “I refuse to fight you! I haven’t——”

“Insulted again!” roared Joe fearsomely. “Put up your fists!”

Eldredge was backing away toward the corner of the shed, Rogers a good two yards in the lead. “I won’t! I’ve told you! You can’t bully me into fighting when—when I’ve got nothing to fight about!”

“Call me a bully now, do you?” growled Joe in ominous calm. He cast an outraged look to the heavens. “Brother, you’ve gone the limit. Look out for yourself!” He swung his right arm up and out. The blow, had it connected, would have lifted Eldredge off his feet and deposited him yards away. But it was woefully short, suggesting that Joe was a poor judge of distance. Nevertheless it so alarmed Eldredge that he trod on his friend’s toes in his hurried retreat, and a wail of pain and protest arose from Rogers, a wail that, mingling with peals of laughter that seemed to come from overhead, made a weird confusion of sound. The group on the ground abruptly paused in their careers and bewilderedly searched the sky for that Jovian laughter. They hadn’t far to seek. Atop the shed roof, their convulsed countenances showing above the peak, were stretched Leighton Keith and Harry Cater.

Joe, after a surprised recognition, grinned and unknotted his suspenders. Eldredge grew red where he had been inclined to pallor and looked unutterably foolish. Rogers smiled in a sickly fashion and dug embarrassed hands into his pockets. On the roof the unsuspected guests conquered their laughter, and Keith said to Joe: “Sorry if we—spoiled your—fun—Dobbins, but we couldn’t—hold in any longer!”

“Well, I didn’t know I was amusing an audience,” replied Joe, “but it don’t matter.” He picked up his sweater as Keith and Cater slid to the edge and dropped over. “Guess we’ll have to postpone this, Eldredge,” he continued. “Too many folks around, eh? I’ll fix another date with you.”

Katie chuckled. “I fancy Eldredge is satisfied,” he said. “Eh, Paul?”

Eldredge glowered. “I didn’t have any quarrel with him,” he muttered. “He—he’s crazy!”

Katie and Keith seemed to find this most amusing, but after a moment of laughter Keith recovered his gravity and said: “I guess you can be trusted to keep this business quiet, Eldredge. How about you, Rogers?” Rogers nodded, his countenance expressing a relief equal to Eldredge’s. “Good. I know Dobbins won’t talk, and neither will we. So there’s no reason why the thing should get out. In a way, it’s a pity to keep it to ourselves, for the fellows would certainly enjoy it, but some jokes are too good to be told. If you want to lead a happy life hereafter, Eldredge, you’d better keep mum! And, by the way, if I ever hear of you scrapping any more I’ll be tempted to tell what happened this morning. You’re much too blood-thirsty, Eldredge, you really are. Restrain yourself, my boy, restrain yourself.” Eldredge muttered something as he moved away. “What was that?” asked Keith sharply. “Did I hear a bad word?”

“No,” replied Eldredge aggrievedly, “you didn’t. I said, ‘All right.’”

“Hm: I’ll try to believe you: but you’d better beat it before I begin to have doubts!”

Rogers had already melted around the corner of the shed and Eldredge, pausing only long enough to send a last vindictive glance at Joe, followed. Alone, the three looked at each other in amused silence. Then Katie helped Joe into his sweater and together they turned toward school. It was only when the forms of Eldredge and Rogers were seen hurrying into the lane that Keith’s risibilities again got the better of him and he began to chuckle. Whereupon Joe and Katie joined.

It was getting dangerously close to chapel time when Myron, smouldering with anger, heard the study door open and the heavy tread of Joe approaching. When the latter appeared Myron was more than ready for him.

“You—you——” he stammered, “you big—big——”

It was maddening! His nicely arranged flow of invective, his long list of insulting adjectives were gone! He couldn’t get his tongue around a single word that satisfied his requirements. All he could do was glare and sputter and strain at his bonds. And Joe stood at the foot of the bed and viewed him mildly and patiently.

“You let me loose!” cried Myron. “You untie me this minute! You’ll see what’ll happen to you, you big—big boob!” Myron groaned at the utter inadequacy of that appellation and gave up the attempt to do justice to his feelings. Joe blinked.

“Got to have your promise not to start any ructions first,” he announced. “It’s pretty near chapel time, Foster, and if you try scrapping with me you’ll be late. So’ll I. Better dress quietly and let me explain things.”

“I’m going to punch your ugly face!” fumed Myron. “I don’t care a hang who’s late to what! You can’t spring your silly tricks on me like this, Dobbins! You can’t——”

“Then I’ll have to let you stay where you are,” said Joe regretfully.

[“You let me up!”]

[“You let me up!”]

“Promise not to start anything?”

“No!”

“Then you don’t get up. You stay right here until I tell you all about it.” Joe seated himself at the foot of the bed and glanced at the clock on the chiffonier. “You see, Foster, it was like this.”

“I don’t want to hear it! I want to get up!”

“Then give me your word to behave.”

Myron studied Joe’s unperturbed face, hesitated and gave in. “All right,” he growled. “But I’ll—I’ll get even with you yet.”

“Sure! Now then we’ll do some hustling.” For two minutes Joe was very busy with knots. “Hope these things didn’t hurt,” he said apologetically. “I tried to fix ’em so you’d be comfortable.”

“Thanks, I’m sure,” said Myron in deep sarcasm. “I can’t tell you how much I appreciate your thoughtfulness!”

Joe grinned. “Well, anyway, I didn’t wake you up, kiddo, did I? Didn’t do you out of any sleep, eh? Say, the Sleeping Quince, or whatever the guy in the fairy story was called, hasn’t a thing on you, Foster. You’re the soundest little slumberer that ever pounded an ear! There you are. Now, then, slip into some duds and let’s beat it. We’ve just got time.”

[CHAPTER XIII]
MYRON CHANGES HIS MIND

The fact that the incident would never become known and make him look ridiculous made it much easier for Myron to forgive Joe for the trick. And the latter’s account of the meeting with Eldredge—Myron got it piecemeal before and after chapel—was so funny that he had to smile more than once in spite of his determination to be haughty and unrelenting. In the end he said grudgingly: “We-ell, I suppose you meant it all right, Dobbins, but it wasn’t fair. Now was it?” And Dobbins obligingly shook his head very soberly and allowed that it wasn’t. In such fashion amity was restored and peace prevailed again.

That afternoon, encountering Harry Cater on the field before practice, Myron regarded that youth keenly, looking for signs of amusement and ready to resent them. But Katie’s countenance suggested no secret diversion. Perhaps he regarded Myron with just a fraction more interest than usual, but it was quite respectful interest. There was a big cut in the football candidates that afternoon and when Coach Driscoll had sheathed his knife again their number had been reduced to sixty-odd. Myron survived, as he deserved to, and so, naturally, did Joe. Joe was already being talked about and more than once had heard his playing discussed and praised. Good linemen are always in demand, and this year, at Parkinson, they were more than ever welcome, for graduation had deprived the eleven of several stars since last fall.

The squads were reduced to four now, and Myron had slipped into a half-back position on the third. There was nothing certain about that position. Some days he went into practice at right half and some days at left, and sometimes he sat on the bench most of the time when scrimmaging began. He was rather resentful because his work wasn’t getting recognition. As a matter of fact, however, he was showing up no more cleverly than half a dozen other candidates for the positions. He handled the ball well, remembered signals, ran hard and fast, dodged fairly and caught punts nicely. So did Meldrum, Brown, Brounker, Vance, Robbins and one or two more. Myron’s mistake was in supposing that, because none praised him, his work wasn’t appreciated. He had an idea that neither coach nor captain really knew of his existence, when, as a matter of fact, he was more than once under discussion during the nightly conferences in Mr. Driscoll’s quarters.

“Promising,” was the coach’s comment one evening when the subject of half-backs was before the meeting. “Plays a nice, clean-cut game. Lacks judgment, though.”

“Handles punts well,” said Captain Mellen. “Made a corking catch yesterday. Remember when Kearns punted down to the twenty yards? That was a peach of a punt, by the way: all of fifty, wasn’t it, Ken?”

“Forty-six,” answered Farnsworth.

“That all? Anyway, this Foster chap made a heady catch, with two ends almost on him and the ball nearly over his head. He’ll round out nicely for next year, I guess.”

It was Myron’s misfortune that he had elected to try for a half-back position at a time when there was much excellent half-back material on hand. Probably he didn’t realise the fact, for he began to get more disgruntled by the end of that week and secretly accused Mr. Driscoll and Jud Mellen of “playing favourites.” Not altogether secretly, either, for he once aired his suspicions for Joe’s benefit. “There’s no chance for a chap here unless he’s known,” he said bitterly. “Maybe if I stay here two or three years longer Driscoll will discover that I’m alive. As it is, if it wasn’t for Farnsworth keeping tabs on the fellows, I could cut practice and no one would ever know it.”

“Well, I don’t know,” answered Joe judicially. “It looks to me like you were getting the same treatment the rest of ’em are getting. Some day you’ll show ’em what you can do and they’ll wake up. I guess your trouble is that you’re bucking against a lot of good backs. Take fellows like Brown and Meldrum and Vance, now. They’re good. You’ve got to hand it to them, kiddo. Corking halves, all of them. Hard to beat. But that don’t mean that you can’t beat ’em. Buckle down and go hard, Foster. The season’s young yet.”

“I’m not anxious enough,” answered Myron, “to kill myself. I dare say I can get along without playing on the team this year. And next year I’ll go somewhere where they give a fellow a fair chance, by George!”

“Well, if that’s your idea you won’t get far,” said Joe drily. “If you don’t care yourself no one’s going to care for you. A guy’s got to hustle and be in earnest to get anywhere in this world. I know that!”

“You fell into it pretty soft,” answered Myron, with a laugh that sounded none too agreeable. “There’s nothing like getting in with the right crowd, eh?”

Joe regarded him with a frown, started to speak, thought better of it and merely grunted. But after a moment he said dispassionately: “Don’t be a sore-head, Foster. It don’t get you anything but hard looks.”

“I’m no sore-head,” laughed the other carelessly. “Gee, it doesn’t mean anything in my young life to play with their old football team. I’ve captained a better team than this school will ever turn out!”

“If I was you,” replied Joe earnestly, “I’d forget about being captain of that team, kiddo, and see if I couldn’t make a first-class private of myself.”

Myron flushed. “It’s all well enough for you to—to give advice and say cute things, Dobbins, but you’ve made yourself solid with the fellows who have the say in football matters and you’re pretty sure of a place. I haven’t, and I don’t intend to. If Mellen and Cater and some of those fellows think I’m going to kow-tow to them, they’re mightily mistaken.”

“Meaning I got my chance by—what do you call it?—cultivating those fellows?” asked Joe. “You made that crack before and I let it pass, Foster, but it don’t go this time. If I’m playing on the second squad it’s because I got out there and worked like a horse, and you know it, Brother!”

Myron dropped his eyes and a long moment of silence followed. Then he said: “I was a rotter, Dobbins. I’m sorry. I guess I am a sore-head, like you said. I guess—I guess I’ll just quit and have done with it.”

Joe laughed. “All right, kiddo! We’ll start fresh. But why don’t you cut out the grouching and just play the game? What’s it to you if you don’t get into the lime-light? Ain’t it something to do what you’re put at and do it well? Say, there’s about sixty guys out there every afternoon, ain’t there? Well, how many of them do you suppose will get places on the first team? Not more than twenty-six, probably. And about twenty more will go into the scrub team. And the others will beat it and try again next year, likely. Every one can’t be a hero, Foster. Some of us have got to lug water!”

“There’s no fun in lugging water, though,” Myron objected.

“Who says so? There’s fun in doing anything if you set out to like it, kiddo. The guys who miss the fun are those who get it into their heads that the job isn’t good enough for ’em, or that some one’s imposing on ’em. What sort of a fellow would Merriman be if he got that dope to working in his bean? He’s lugging water, all right, believe me! Living on a couple of dollars a week and working about sixteen hours a day! But he gets fun out of it, don’t he? He’s about the happiest guy around these parts, ain’t he? Mind you, Foster, I ain’t saying that a fellow’s got to be satisfied with just lugging water. He oughtn’t to be. He ought to be thinking about the time when he can chuck the pail and do something better. But while he is lugging water he wants to do it well and whistle at it!”

“All right,” laughed Myron, good temper restored, “I’ll keep on with the pail a while longer. Say, Dobbins, you ought to prepare for the ministry or the lecture platform. You’re going to waste yourself shovelling spruce gum!”

Joe smiled. “I’m not going to shovel spruce gum, kiddo. I’m going to be a lawyer. How’s that hit you?”

“If I’m ever arrested for murder I’ll certainly send for you!” answered Myron emphatically.

Two days later Myron received notice that his overdue furniture had arrived. For some reason he was not nearly so keen about it as he had been a week or more ago. And when, accompanied by Joe—he had felt the need of a practical mind in the matter of getting the things off the car and up to the dormitory and had begged Joe’s assistance—he saw how many pieces of furniture there were he was, to use his own word, flabbergasted. For his part, Joe just stared and blinked. Every piece was carefully and enormously crated, and the staring address on each was a horrible challenge. For the things were much larger than he remembered them and when he thought of the limited area of Number 17 Sohmer he gasped. The services of the Warne Warehouse Company had been called on, and three husky men were soon emptying the car while Myron and Joe sat on a baggage truck and looked on. Myron felt somewhat apologetic and shot occasional inquiring glances at his companion. But Joe was silent and seemingly unmoved after the first survey. Myron ventured at last:

“I don’t see where all the stuff is going, do you?”

Joe shook his head. “No, I don’t. Maybe they’ll let you put about half of it in the corridor.”

“It’s nothing to joke about,” Myron grumbled. “We won’t be able to move without barking our shins. I’d like to know how big mother thinks those rooms are!”

“I’m not worrying about my shins,” said Joe placidly, adding when Myron looked a question: “I won’t be there, you know.”

“Oh!” said the other. Silence again prevailed. The trucks trundled from box-car to platform and a nearby engine let off steam with disconcerting suddenness. Finally: “I shouldn’t think you’d want to live in that room if it’s like you say it is,” observed Myron. “Only one window and—and all.”

“Oh, it ain’t so worse. Merriman wants me to go over and take half his place, but that part of town’s pretty fierce.”

“Great Scott! Why, that’s an awful hole he’s in!”

“Well, with something more in it, it wouldn’t be bad.”

“I don’t see——” Myron paused and was busy for a moment detaching a splinter from beside him. “I don’t see,” he continued, “why you want to move anyhow.”

Joe turned slowly and observed him in mild surprise. “Well, considering that you invited me to,” he answered, “that’s a funny crack to make.”

“Maybe they wouldn’t let me have the rooms by myself, anyhow,” said Myron. “And I’d rather have you with me than—than some fellow I didn’t know at all.”

“Thanks, but I guess I’d better light out. I’m sort of backwoodsy for you, Foster. Maybe the next guy will be more your style, see? Besides——”

“Besides what?” demanded Myron with a frown.

Joe chuckled and nodded toward the furniture. “I couldn’t live up to that,” he said.

Myron’s gaze followed his companion’s and he viewed the crated monstrosities distastefully. “I don’t see why you need to keep rubbing it in about my—my ‘style,’” he said crossly. “Just because I have more than two suits of clothes you needn’t always try to make out that I’m a—a——”

“I don’t,” answered Joe calmly. “Besides, I’ve got four suits myself now: and an extra pair of trousers!”

“Then—then it’s just that stuff?” asked Myron, waving toward the furniture.

“Oh, I don’t know. Maybe. You see, kiddo—I mean Foster——”

“Oh, dry up,” muttered Myron.

“You see, I’ve been used to simple things. The old man and me—I—me—whatever it is—lived pretty plain for a long time. Lately we’ve stayed in a hotel in Portland most of the time. I ain’t used to chiffoniers and enamelled tables and all those gimcracks. I’d feel sort of—of low in my mind if I had to live in a place all dolled up with ribbons and lace and mirrors and things.”

“There aren’t any ribbons and——”

“Well, you get my idea,” continued Joe untroubledly. “Me, I sort of feel freer and more contented in a log-cabin. I suppose it’s all what you’re used to, eh?”

Myron made no reply for a minute. They were loading the big moving-van now and he watched them morosely. He half wished they’d drop that grey-enamelled bookcase over the side. At last he said desperately: “Look here, Joe! If I dump all that truck into the warehouse will you stay?”

It was the first time he had ever called Joe by his first name and that youth looked almost startled. “Why—why, you don’t want to do that!” he stammered.

“Yes, I do,” replied Myron doggedly. “That’s just what I do want. It was a mistake, sending it. I sort of felt so when mother suggested it, but she set her heart on it, you know: thought I’d be more comfortable and all if I had my own things. But they’d look awfully silly, all those light grey tables and chairs and bookcases, and I don’t want them there. So—so I’m going to let these folks store them until spring. There’s no use hurting mother’s feelings, and I’ll just let her think that I’m using them; unless she asks me. When spring comes I’ll ship them back. And you’ll stay where you are, won’t you?”

“Gosh! Say, this is so sudden, kiddo! And it sure seems an awful shame to hide all those corking things. But—why, if you really don’t want them and—and you don’t mind me being sort of rough and—and all that, I’ll stick around.”

“Honest, Joe?”

“Sure, kiddo!”

Myron drew a long breath of relief and turned to the man in charge of the job. “I’ve changed my mind,” he said. “Take those things to the warehouse, will you? And tell them I’ll be around tomorrow and fix things up.”

[CHAPTER XIV]
“CHAS”

Only one thing troubled Joe, which was that he couldn’t have Zephaniah with him. Faculty strongly disapproved of dogs, even very young and very small dogs, in the dormitories. So he made arrangements with a good-hearted stableman to look after the puppy and himself rigged up a home for it in an unused stall behind a litter of brooms and old harness and buckets. Puppy biscuit, which Merriman sternly decreed was to be its only food, was laid in lavishly, a china drinking bowl was supplied and Zephaniah, very unhappy at parting from his brothers and sisters and mother, was duly installed. The pun is not mine, but Myron’s. Joe visited the stable at least once a day and was to be seen stalking along the streets accompanied by a silly, frisking little atom at the end of a magnificent leather leash. Once away from the busy thoroughfares, the puppy was set free and had a glorious time. Frequently Myron went along on these excursions and the two boys often laughed themselves sick over the ridiculous antics of Zephaniah Q. Dobbins. Several times Merriman also joined them and took along Tess and her two remaining offspring, and at such times life was chock full of excitement and merriment. The weather was wonderful that autumn and those strolls about the outskirts of the town were events that remained in Myron’s memory long afterwards. They led to an ever-increasing intimacy between the three boys and Myron began to find existence at Parkinson really enjoyable. No one could fail to like Joe Dobbins or to admire his big-heartedness and sturdy honesty of purpose and deed, and Myron least of all. He saw now the kindness that had underlaid the indignity Joe had practised on him when he had been forcibly kept from meeting Paul Eldredge, and was grateful. He saw many other thoughtful and kindly acts as well. Joe’s rough ways, or ways that had seemed rough at first, were now only things to smile at. Myron was learning that there were many things less to be desired in a friend and room-mate than uncouthness. New clothes, too, had made a difference in Joe. Under Myron’s guiding hand he had purchased two plain but well-fitting suits—as well as the extra pair of trousers that Myron had advised and that Joe was now so proud of—and, in a way, he was living up to those suits. He had been good-naturedly guyed by many of his friends and acquaintances, of which he had dozens a week after the beginning of school, for the change wrought in his appearance had been well-nigh startling, but he hadn’t minded a bit: it took more than that to upset Joe’s equanimity. It was about the time that he first appeared in classroom in his new clothes that some fellow fell on the quite obvious nickname of “Whoa,” to which Joe was already accustomed, and from that time on he was “Whoa” Dobbins to the whole school. Only Myron and Andrew Merriman stuck to “Joe.”

Merriman required more knowing than Joe Dobbins. Although Myron had liked him at first acquaintance and grew to like him more as time went on, he never felt that he knew him as thoroughly as he knew the other. “Merry Andrew” at first meeting seemed perfectly understandable. At the second meeting you realised that most of him was below the surface. At subsequent meetings you despaired of ever knowing him thoroughly. He was the happiest, cheerfulest fellow Myron had ever encountered, and no one would have suspected that there was such a thing as a care in his life. And perhaps there weren’t many, either, for a care doesn’t become a care until you let it, and Merriman’s policy was not to let it. Of friends, at least close friends, beyond Joe and Andrew, Myron had none so far. He knew various fellows, most of them football chaps, but only casually. He didn’t make friends easily. It is only fair to acknowledge that there was something in Myron’s attitude, although he didn’t realise it, that warned fellows away. Popularity such as Joe might attain would never fall to his share.

So a fortnight passed and Parkinson played her second football game and began to find her stride. Cumner High School proved less of an adversary than expected and went down to defeat, 12 to 0. Myron didn’t get into action: didn’t expect to, for that matter: and neither did Joe. Joe, however, expected to, and was a little disappointed and decidedly restive while he and Myron watched from the bench. Inaction didn’t suit Joe a bit. Garrison, who had played the position last season on the scrub eleven, stayed in at right guard until the last quarter and then Mills, a recent discovery of Coach Driscoll’s, was given a chance. Mills, a big, yellow-haired infant of seventeen, proved willing and hard-working, but he was woefully inexperienced, and only the fact that Cumner had already shot her bolt and was playing a strictly defensive game kept him in until the final whistle.

Joe’s hero on the team was Leighton Keith, who played right tackle. Joe expatiated for whole minutes at a time on Keith’s work and rather bored Myron. “Honest, Joe,” he protested, “I think he plays perfectly good ball and all that, but I don’t see where he has anything on Mellen, or even Flay.”

Joe shook his head. “You aren’t watching him, Myron. You’ve got to know the position, too. I’ve played tackle, kiddo, and I know what a guy’s up against. I’ll tell you about Keith and Mellen. Mellen’s a fair, average tackle, a heap better on attack than defence, I guess, but Keith’s more than that. He—look here, it’s like this. Know those dollar ‘turnips’? Well, they keep right good time, don’t they?”

“Some of them,” agreed Myron.

“Most of them, Brother. Well, Mellen’s like a dollar watch. Looks good outside and works all right inside. Dependable and all that. All right! Now did you ever cast your eye over a nice hundred and fifty dollar watch all dotted over inside with jewels and all glisteny with little wheels and dudads? Sure! That’s Keith. He works just like the innards of that watch, kiddo. Every move’s exact. He never misses a tick. He’s smooth-running and guaranteed. He—he’s an artist! I’d just as lief see Keith play tackle as see old Josh Reynolds paint one of his million-dollar portraits.”

“Reynolds is dead,” laughed Myron.

“All the more reason then,” replied Joe calmly. “Keith isn’t!”

“All right,” said Myron, “you cheer for Keith. To my mind the best player in that brown bunch is Cater.”

“Yeah, he’s good, too,” owned Joe. “I call him a nice little quarter. Nice fellow, too, Cater. So’s Steve Kearns. Know him?”

“Playing full-back? No, only to nod to. I don’t think he’s as good a full-back as Williams, though.”

“Both of them will stand improving,” said Joe drily. “Gee, I wish Driscoll would let me in on this!”

But, as has been said, he didn’t, and when the game was over Joe and Myron trotted back to the gymnasium with a host of others equally unfortunate. After showers and a return to citizen’s clothing they took Zephaniah Q. Dobbins for a walk. Or, it would be more exact to say, a romp.

The Latin coaching ended the last of the next week, by which time Andrew Merriman declared Myron up with the class. Myron wasn’t so certain of it and would have continued the tutoring if Andrew hadn’t refused. “You’re discharged,” said Andrew. “You know about as much as Old Addie himself now, and a lot more than I. All you have got to do is study.”

“Is that all?” asked Myron ironically. “It isn’t anything if you say it quick, is it?”

But Andrew proved right about it, and Myron found that as much work applied to Latin as to other studies kept him on good terms with Old Addie.

There was one thorn in Myron’s side at this time, and its name was Charles Cummins. Cummins was a riddle to Myron. Ever since the time he had spent that unpleasant half-hour in Cummins’ awkward squad the freckle-faced, shock-haired giant had never let an opportunity pass to accost him. There was no harm in that, of course; the trouble was that Cummins always made himself so disagreeable! It seemed to Myron that the chap deliberately sought him out in order to rile him. And it wasn’t so much what Cummins said as the way he said it. It got so that Myron only had to see the other approaching to feel huffy. Long before Cummins got within speaking distance Myron had his back up, and Cummins, knowing it, seemed to take delight in it.

Cummins was generally known as “Chas,” from his habit of signing himself “Chas. L. Cummins.” He declared that Charles was far too long to spell out. He played left guard and played it well if erratically. In a way, he was difficult to get along with, for he considered himself a law unto himself, and it was no unusual thing for him to veto a coach’s instructions, which, up to a certain point, the coach stood for. The others were at outs with him half the time, but liked him through all. Oddly enough, even the timidest youngster he ever bullied and brow-beat in practice was strong for him afterwards. It was no secret that he was holding his position on the first team by little more than an eyelash, for Brodhead was hot on his trail and Coach Driscoll had put up with more of Cummins’ calm insurrection than was agreeable to him. In appearance “Chas” was a broad, heavily-built giant with much red-brown hair that never was known to lie straight, eyes that nearly matched the hair and a round, freckled face that was seldom neutral. It was either scowling savagely or grinning broadly. For his part, Myron preferred Cummins’ scowls to his smiles, for the smiles generally held mischief. Usually the two encountered each other only on the playfield in the afternoon, but one morning a few days after the Cumner game Myron, walking back to the room after a chemistry class, sighted Cummins coming out of Goss Hall.

“Gee, there’s that pest!” he muttered, and, contrary to school regulations, started on a short cut across the grass in the hope of avoiding him. But it was not to be. Cummins had sighted his prey.

“O Foster!” he called.

Myron nodded and kept on.

“Tarry, I prithee! I wouldst a word with thee, fair youth!”

“Go to thunder!” murmured Myron. But Cummins headed him off without difficulty.

“S’pose you know,” he said, “that we can both be shot at sunrise for walking cross-lots like this. Where do you room?”

“Sohmer,” answered Myron briefly.

“Ho, with the swells, eh? Lead on, Reginald! I would visit thy fair abode in yon palace!”

“Not receiving today, thanks,” said Myron. “I’ve got some work to do.”

“Work? Didn’t suppose you silk-stocking bunch in Sohmer ever had to work! Thought you had slaves to do that sort of thing. How little one half the school knows how t’other half lives! To think of you soiling your lily-white hands and getting calloused with labour! What sort of work are you going to do? Clip coupons?”

“Oh, dry up!” exploded Myron. “I’m sick to death of your chatter! And I’m sick of being guyed all the time, too! Lay off, can’t you?”

To his surprise, “Chas” chuckled and thumped him on the back. “A-a-ay!” he applauded. “That’s the stuff, old chap! I was beginning to think you didn’t have any pep in you. There’s always hope for a fellow who can get mad!”

“That isn’t hard when you’re around,” answered Myron, unappeased. “Don’t bang me on the back, either. I don’t like it.”

“All right,” answered Chas, sobering. “I’ll behave. Mind if I come up for a few minutes?”

Myron looked at him suspiciously, but for once Cummins was neither scowling nor grinning. “I guess not,” he answered ungraciously.

“Fine! But don’t embarrass me with your welcome, old chap,” chuckled Chas as they mounted the steps. “Some dive this, isn’t it? Don’t believe I ever hoped to get in here.” Joe was not in and when Chas had looked around the study—a trifle disappointedly, Myron thought—and seen the view from the window he seated himself on the window-seat, took one knee into his hands and viewed his host reflectively. Myron, at the table, fussed with his books and fumed inwardly and wished Cummins would get out. Finally the latter said: “Foster, you and I ought to be great pals.”

Myron looked every bit of the astonishment he felt, and his guest chuckled again. “Because we’re as unlike as three peas, and the only things that can be more unlike than three peas is four peas. You’ve got coin and I’m the poor but proud scion of a fine old chap who made his living laying bricks. You’re a swell and I’m a—well, I’m not. You’re a sort of touch-me-not and I’d make friends with any one. Probably we don’t think alike on any two subjects under the sun. So we ought to hit it off great. Get the idea?”

“I’m afraid I don’t,” owned the other, interested and puzzled.

“It’s the old law of the attraction of opposites, or whatever it’s called. Now I took a shine to you right off”—Myron sniffed, but Chas only smiled and went on—“Oh, I don’t always hug a chap I take a fancy to. That’s not my way. I try ’em out first. I tried you out, Foster, old chap.”

“Did you? Well, much obliged, but——”

“You’d rather I minded my own business, you mean? That’s what I like about you, Foster, that stand-offishness. I like the way you sort of turn your nose up and look haughty. You see, I’m not like that. If a stranger says ‘Howdy’ to me I either say ‘Glad to know you’ or I biff him one and pass on. I couldn’t freeze him with a glance as you can to save my precious life.”

“I didn’t know I was as bad as that,” said Myron, a trifle uncomfortable. “I don’t think I mean to be.”

“Course you don’t. That’s the beauty of it. It comes natural to you, just like liking artichokes and olives. I’ll bet you anything you were eating olives when you were four, and I haven’t got to really like the pesky things yet!”

“You talk a lot of nonsense,” said Myron, smiling in spite of himself. “Just what are you getting at?”

“Well, I’m not after a loan, anyway,” laughed Chas. “I was telling you that I tried you out. So I did. ‘He looks like he was a nice sort under the shell,’ says I to me. ‘A terrapin isn’t awfully jolly and friendly when he sticks his head out at you and hisses, but they tell me that when you get under the shell he’s mighty good eating.’ So, thinks I——”

“The idea being that I’ve got to be dead to be nice?” asked Myron drily.

“No, not a bit. The—the simile was unfortunate. No, but I thought I’d get a peek under the shell and see what you were really like. So I set out to make you mad. If a fellow can’t get mad he’s no good. Anyway, he’s no good to me. And he’s no good for football. I was just about giving you up, old chap. You frowned and grumbled and sputtered once or twice and looked haughty as anything, but you wouldn’t get your dander up. Not until today.”

“Well,” said Myron, “now that I have got mad, what’s the big idea?”

“Why, now we can be pals,” answered Chas unhesitatingly. “How does that strike you?”

“Why—why, I don’t know!” Myron faltered. “It sounds like some sort of a silly joke to me, Cummins.”

“No joke at all.” Chas unclasped his hands and leaned back, his big, freckled face wreathed in smiles. “No hurry, though. Think it over. Anyway, there’s something more important just now. I’ve watched you on the field, Foster, ever since they dumped you on me that day. I’ve seen you play and I can tell you what I think of you, if you like.”

It’s human to like flattery in moderation, and so Myron said “Go ahead,” and prepared to look modest.

“I think you’re rotten,” said Chas.

“Wh-what?” gasped Myron.

“Rotten, with a large capital R, Foster.”

“Thanks!”

“Don’t get huffy, old chap. I don’t say you can’t play good football. I think you can. But you’re not doing it now. If I didn’t think you could play the game according to the Old Masters I wouldn’t be talking about it to you. You play like a fellow who doesn’t care. You don’t try hard enough. You don’t deliver the goods. You’re soldiering. Ever see a man laying a shingle roof? Well, he could do the whole thing in a day, maybe, if he worked hard. But he belongs to the union and the union won’t let him lay more than just so many shingles. So he has to slow down. That’s like you. Say, what union do you belong to?”

“I guess the trouble is that I don’t belong,” said Myron. “I’m an outsider, and so I don’t get a chance.”

“Tell that to the Marines! Look here, old chap, you can make a real football player of yourself if you want to. I’ve watched you and I know. I’ve seen what you could have done lots of times when you didn’t do it. Now, just what is the row?”

So Myron told him his version of it and Chas listened silently and even sympathetically. But at the end he shook his head. “You’re all wrong, Foster,” he said. “I’ve been here two years now and I know how things go. The trouble with you, I guess, is that you came here with the idea that folks were going to fall all over themselves to shake hands with you and pull you into the football team. Isn’t that pretty near so?”

It was, and Myron for the first time realised it, but he couldn’t quite get himself to acknowledge it to Cummins. He tried to look hurt and made no answer.

“Sure!” said Chas. “And when the coach and the captain didn’t give a dinner in your honour and ask you to accept a place on the team and give them the benefit of your advice as to running same you got peeved. That’s just what I’d have done if I’d been you, you see, so I know. If it was me I’d have either gone to the coach and made a big kick and told him how good I was or else I’d have gone out and played so hard that they’d have either had to take me on or chuck me to save the lives of the others! But you, being Haughty Harold, just froze them with a glance—which same they didn’t happen to see—and went your way. And it’s a rotten way, too. Because it won’t get you anywhere. Driscoll won’t fall for you until you show something and you won’t show anything until Driscoll pats you on the back. Say, I’m talking a whole lot! What time is it? And you’ve got some digging to do! I’ll beat it. Think over my words of wisdom, Foster, and drop around tonight and hear more. I’ve got a plan, old chap. I’m in 16 Goss; first floor, on the right. Bye-bye!”

And before Myron could agree or refuse the invitation Cummins had hurried to the door and was clattering downstairs. Myron went to the window and, in somewhat of a daze, watched Cummins emerge below and disappear under the trees. Then he sat himself down on the window-seat, plunged both hands into trousers pockets and frowned intently at his shoes. He didn’t get much studying done that hour.

[CHAPTER XV]
THE PLAN

There was hard practice that afternoon in preparation for the Musket Hill Academy game, and the second squad, in process of becoming the second team, with a coach and signals of its own, was sent against the first for three long periods. Myron found himself with the third squad, as usual, however, and ended practice with a half-hour scrimmage against the substitutes. Perhaps Cummins’ words had made an impression, for he certainly played good, hard ball today and ran rings around the opposing ends and backs. As they played on the second team gridiron, while the first team was battling, his performance was not noted by the coach. But Keene, an end who was off with a bad ankle and who refereed the scrimmage, saw and casually made mention of Myron’s work to Jud Mellen later.

“That chap Foster played a nifty game today,” said Keene. “He might bear watching, Jud.”

“Foster? Yes, he’s not half bad. If we didn’t have so many good halves he might be useful. Best we can do for him, though, is to carry him over for next year, I guess.”

“Well, he’s a pretty player. It seems too bad to waste him. How would he fit at end?”

“Looking for a chance to retire?” laughed Jud. “What would we do with another end, Larry? Have a heart, man!”

“Well, but he ought to be tried somewhere, just the same, Jud. He plays so blamed smooth!”

“I wonder if he’d make a quarter.” Jud paused in the act of lacing a shoe and stared speculatively at a grated and dusty window. Then he shook his head. “I guess we’re good enough at quarter. We’ll know better after Saturday’s game, though. How’s the foot getting on? Going to be able to play a bit?”

“Sure! It’s coming on fine. I’ll be good for the whole game.”

“Yes, you will, son! A couple of quarters is about your stunt, I guess. Driscoll wants to give O’Curry a show, anyway. Know what I think? Well, I think Musket Hill’s going to give us a tough old tussle. They’ve got almost every lineman they had last year and the same quarter; and you know what the score was last time.”

“Twelve to ten, wasn’t it?”

“Yes, and it ought to have been turned around, for they played us to a standstill in the second half. Driscoll’s firm for starting with a second-string line, but I don’t like it. That Musket Hill coach is a fox. If they get a score on us in the first quarter we’ll be lucky to pass them.”

“They play hard ball, and that’s no joke,” agreed Keene. “I hope he pulls me out before Grafton gets in.”

“What’s the matter with Graf?”

“I don’t know, but I can’t seem to get on with him. I think he plays too much for the centre of the line. There’s always a hole there and I get about two yards more of territory to look after. You keep your place, but Grafton sort of wanders in.”

“Glad you spoke of it,” answered Jud. “I’ll watch him. Going over?”

Up to a half-hour after supper Myron was convinced that he had no intention of visiting Cummins that evening. Cummins was a lot more decent than he had thought him, in fact a rather likable fellow, but he had a disagreeable way of saying things that—well, didn’t need to be said. Besides, there was something almost indecent in telling another that you liked him and asking him to be pals! Even if Cummins had taken a fancy to him, as he declared, at least he might have kept it to himself. But when supper was over and Myron had turned on the steam in Number 17—the evenings were getting decidedly chilly now—and settled himself to write a letter home, Cummins’ freckled countenance insisted on obtruding itself between him and the sheet of grey, yellow-monogrammed paper. Joe had not returned to the room and, when the letter was written and he had brushed up on Latin and math., he would be pretty well bored, he supposed. He got as far as “Dear Mother and Father: I didn’t get this letter written yesterday because I was very busy——” Then, after trying to recall what he had been busy with and fiddling with the self-filling device on his pen for a good ten minutes, he gave it up. He guessed he’d walk over and hear what Cummins’ plan was. Not that it interested him any, but he didn’t feel like writing just now.

Cummins himself answered Myron’s knock, although the battered door of Number 16 bore not only his card but that of “Guy Henry Brown,” to the end of which name some facetious person had added the letters “D.D.” Brown, who played right half on the first team, was not at home, however, and Cummins, stretched out along the window-seat, was the sole occupant of the room. The room served as study and chamber both, and a narrow, white-enamelled bed stood against the wall on each side. The rest of the furnishings were nondescript and had evidently seen long service. A few posters adorned the painted walls and the carpet was so threadbare in places that one had to guess at the original pattern and hue. Nevertheless, there was a comfortable and home-like look to Number 16 which Myron acknowledged. Cummins tore himself from the book he was reading with unflattering deliberateness and indicated a shabby automatic rocking-chair.

“Try the Nerve Dispeller,” he invited. “So called because when used your own nerves leave you and go to the other chap, who has to watch you rock. It’s all right; it won’t go over; that’s just its playful way.”

“What were you reading?” asked Myron, by way of conversation.

Chas held the book up and the visitor was surprised to see that it was what he mentally called “a kid’s story.”

“Oh,” he murmured.

Chas grinned. “I know, but I like them. They’re easy to understand and there’s generally something doing all through; and you can’t say that for these novels some of the fellows pretend to read. I tried to wade through one last summer. Nothing happened until I got to page 112, and then the hero changed his shoes. Maybe he changed back again later, but I ducked. Well, how are you tonight?”

“Me? All right, thanks.” Myron wondered why he had said “Me,” and then realised that he had caught the trick from Joe. “I had a letter to write, but I couldn’t seem to get at it, and so I thought I’d drop over and see—hear——”

“That plan? Well, it’s a good one. Put your feet up here, will you, and keep that thing still? Do you mind? It pretty nearly sets me crazy to talk to any one who’s bobbing back and forth like one of those china mandarins! I’d have chucked that chair long ago, only Guy hates it worse than I do. Do you know him, by the way? Guy Brown: plays right half on the first.”

“Only to speak to. I’m not well acquainted amongst the ministry.”

“Oh, that? Some fresh youth wrote that and a couple of days afterwards Hale called—Do you have him in physics? He lives down the hall—and said it was sacrilegious. But I told him it stood for ‘Decent Dub’ and he calmed down. Say, Foster, can you keep a secret?”

“Yes, of course.”

“There’s no ‘of course’ about it,” said Chas. “Lot’s of fellows can’t. I’m not very good at it myself. But I guess you’re one of the kind who can. Well, here it is. I’m going to be captain next year.”

“Are you? Captain of what?” asked Myron politely.

“Football, you chump! What did you think, the Tennis Team?”

“Oh!” Myron stared, wondering whether the other was joking. But Chas appeared to be quite in earnest and returned Myron’s gaze with an expression of bland inquiry.

“Does that interest you?” he asked.

“It interests me to know how you know you are,” said Myron.

“Of course. Remember that it’s a secret. If you ever tell any one what I’ve just said I’ll draw and quarter you and frizzle you crisp in boiling oil. I know it, old chap, because I’m after the job, and what I go after I get. Unless some dark horse develops between now and the Kenwood game I’m certain to get it. So we’ll call that settled, shall we?”

“Just as you say,” laughed Myron. “If you want it, though, I hope you get it.”

“Thanks. Of course, I realise that it isn’t usual to mention such matters. You’re not supposed to know that there is such a thing as a captaincy. When you get it you nearly die of surprise. Well, that’s not me. I’m after it. Mean to get it, too. I wouldn’t say this to every fellow because most of them would be so shocked at my—my indelicacy they’d never get over it. Besides which, they’d probably vote against me.” Chas chuckled. “So can you if you like, Foster. I’m not making a bid for your vote.”

“I’m not likely to have one,” replied Myron drily.

“You will have if my plan works out. Now you listen. If I’m going to captain next year’s team—and I am, old chap; don’t you doubt it!—I want some players around me. I don’t want to run up against Kenwood and get licked. That might do when some other fellow’s running things, but not when I am. No, I want some real players with me, Foster. So I’m building my team this fall.”

Myron laughed. “Honest, Cummins, you’re the craziest chump I ever met! Are you—are you in earnest?”

“Why not? Good, practical scheme, isn’t it? What’s wrong with it?”

“Well, but—you’re not captain! And how can you build up a team when you’re not?”

“How? You watch me. Take your case, old chap. Maybe you won’t make good this year. Mind, I say maybe. I think you will. But if you don’t, what?” Myron shook his head helplessly, signifying he gave it up and that no matter what the answer proved to be he was beyond surprise! “Why, you’ll be A1 material for next—if you keep your head up. That’s my game, to see that you keep going and learn all the football you can and don’t drop out of training after the season’s over. I think basket-ball will be a good thing for you to take up, Foster. Or you might go in for the gymnastic team. But I won’t have you playing baseball, so don’t get that bug in your bonnet. Baseball’s spoiled a lot of good football chaps. Track’s all right if you don’t overdo it. We’ll settle all that later, though.”

“Very well,” agreed Myron docilely. “Don’t mind me.”

Chas grinned. “Not going to—much. But you see the idea, don’t you? What do you think of it?”

“I think,” returned Myron deliberately, “that it’s one of the craziest schemes I ever heard of.”

Chas looked much pleased. “All right. And then what?”

“And I think it may work out beautifully.”

“Sure it will! So that’s why I went after you, old chap. You’re a ‘prospect.’”

“Oh,” said Myron demurely, “I thought it was because you had taken a violent fancy to me.”

“That too! Don’t make any mistake, old chap. I want fellows of the right sort, and I want fellows that I like and who like me. I can do things with that sort: they’ll work for me. And I’ll work for them: work my fingers off if necessary. Now for the plan.”

“I’m listening,” said Myron.

“How’d you like to get on the first this fall, Foster?”

“Well, seeing that I’m black-and-blue pretty nearly all over, that seems sort of—of idle!”

“Just getting black-and-blue isn’t enough, old chap. Lots of dubs are purple-and-green that’ll be dropped next week. Now, look here. Who told you you were a born half-back?”

“No one, of course. I’ve played that position, though, and know it. I played end for a while too, but half seemed to be my place.”

“Yes. Well, we’ve got exactly five good to middling half-backs this year, Foster, and you’re no better than about two of them and not nearly so good as two more, Brown and Meldrum. So, you see, you’re sort of up against it. See that, don’t you?”

“I suppose so. Just the same, if I had a chance I might beat Brounker and Vance, and then, if Brown or Meldrum——”

“Broke his neck you’d get in?” asked Chas impatiently. “What’s the good of that sort of figuring? What you want to do, old chap, is to go after something that shows a chance of success. That other game’s too much like waiting for dead men’s shoes, as they say. You might get into the big game for five minutes, or you might not. And I’m not so dead sure that you could beat out those fellows. And, anyway, there’s still Robbins against you. Yes, I know he isn’t such a wonder now, but suppose he starts to come while you’re coming? How do you know he won’t come just as fast, or a little bit faster? No, that’s rotten planning, Foster. You’re all wrong. Forget that you’re a half and go hard after a job that’s open to you.”

“Where’ll I find it?” asked Myron. “What other position is there?”

“Full-back,” said Chas.

[CHAPTER XVI]
CONSPIRACY

“Full-back!” exclaimed Myron. “Why, I never played it! I don’t know it! I——”

“Piffle! What’s the difference? Any chap who can play half well can play full-back decently. Besides, I’ve got a strong hunch that you’d make a good one, Foster. You aren’t as heavy as I’d like you, but you’re fast and you start quick and you hit ’em hard. When it comes right down to it, I’m not sure I wouldn’t as soon have a lighter man who can jump off quick as a heavier one who gets going slow. But the big idea about turning you into a full-back is that you’ll have a fair show for that position. I like Steve Kearns, but he ought never to have been taken back from the line. He was a mighty promising tackle last year until Desmond got damaged and we had to have a full-back in a hurry. As for Williams and Bob Houghton, they aren’t more than fair. There’s a nice job waiting for a smart, steady full-back who’ll live on the premises and be kind to the dogs, Foster. And I nominate you.”

Myron made no answer for a moment. This thing of having some one else arrange his affairs was a bit startling. Finally he said, doubtfully: “Aren’t we forgetting that Driscoll and Mellen have something to say, Cummins?”

“Not a bit of it. What we’ve got to do is show them that you are the fellow they want there. Then they’ll simply have to have you.”

“It would be learning a new game, though.”

“Rot! The positions aren’t very different. Just think a minute.” Myron thought. Then:

“How about punting?” he asked dubiously.

“I’ve seen you do thirty,” answered Chas.

“You seem to have made a life study of me,” laughed Myron. “Yes, I can do thirty, and better, too, I guess, but I’ve never had much of it to do and I don’t believe that I can place my kicks, and I don’t know how I’d get along if a bunch of wild Indians was tearing down on me. I’d probably get frightfully rattled and try to put the ball down my neck, or something.”

“You’d need practice, of course,” Chas granted. “I could show you a few things myself, and if you went after the position Driscoll would see that you got plenty of punting work. Don’t let that worry you. The thing to do, and it may not be so easy, is to persuade Driscoll that you have the making of a good full-back.”

“Ye-es.” Myron was silent a minute. “I’d like to ask you something, Cummins,” he said at last.

“Shoot!”

“What other changes are you considering on the team?”

Chas chuckled. “None, just now. I had thought—but never mind that. You see, what I want to do, Foster, is to fix things so that when next September rolls around I’ll have the making of a good team. A lot of this year’s bunch will graduate, you know. I’ve got to make sure that there’ll be other chaps to take their places. For instance, Steve Kearns, even if he was a corking good full-back, wouldn’t do me any good next fall because he won’t be here. Don’t get it into your bean that I’m queering this year’s team for the sake of next year’s, though, because that’s not the idea. I wouldn’t do that if I could.”

“I begin to believe you could, all right,” said Myron. “I have a notion that if you thought it would be better to have some one else captain you’d talk Mellen into resigning!”

“Well, I dare say I’d try it,” laughed Chas. “Now what do you say?”

“About this full-back business? Why, I’m willing, Cummins. I’m not getting anywhere as a half-back, and I guess I wouldn’t do much worse at the other stunt. But what I don’t see is how I’m to persuade the coach to let me change.”

“I know. I haven’t got that quite doped out yet. I don’t believe just asking for a chance to play full-back would do. He might fall for it, and he might not. You let me mull that over until tomorrow and I’ll see if I can’t hit on some scheme. Meanwhile, if I were you I’d sort of put myself through an exam and see how much I knew about playing full. You might take a book that I have along with you and read what it says about it. It’s not a very new book, but it’s the best that’s ever been written, and there isn’t much difference in a full-back’s job then and now. I’ll see you at the field tomorrow. By the way, are you going with the team Saturday?”

“To North Lebron? I don’t know. I don’t suppose Driscoll will take me with the squad, but I might go along and see the game.”

“You’d better. It doesn’t hurt a fellow to see all the football he can, even if he sees it from the stand. Got to beat it? Well, here’s the book, old chap. And mind, not a word to any one about this business. It’s between you and me, Foster.”

Myron found Joe and Andrew Merriman in the room when he got back, and he took his part in the talk for a half-hour or so. When Andrew went he pushed his school books aside and opened the little blue-bound volume that Cummins had loaned him. Joe, across the table, half-hidden by the drop-light, knotted his fingers in his hair and groaned at intervals. At ten both boys yawned and went to bed. Myron was not a sparkling success in Latin class the next forenoon.

A three o’clock recitation made him somewhat late for practice and Cummins was trotting about the gridiron in signal work when he arrived at the field. Mr. Driscoll sent him over to the second team gridiron to join the third squad and so, after all, he didn’t learn from Cummins whether the latter had found a solution to their problem. Nor did he run across Cummins again that day. The first team was let off early, all save the punters and goal-kickers, and Cummins had left the gymnasium when Myron got there at half-past five. He considered looking him up at his room after supper, but he had rather more than half promised Joe to go over to Merriman’s and so decided not to.