CHAPTER IV

FOOTBALL PRACTICE

There was a moment of silence in the room. No one cared to speak, for, though Tom and Sid felt their hearts filled with sympathy for Phil, they did not know what to say. It was curiously quiet--oppressively so. The fussy little alarm clock, on the table piled high with books, was ticking away, as if eager to call attention to itself. Indeed, it did succeed in a measure, for Tom remarked gently.

"Seems to me that sounds louder than it did in the other room."

"There are more echoes here," spoke Sid, also quietly. "It will be different when we get the things up."

The spell had been broken. Each one breathed a sigh of relief. Phil, whose face had become strangely white, stared down at the telegram in his hand. The paper rustled loudly--almost as loudly as the clock ticked. Tom spoke again.

"Is it--is it something sudden?" he asked. "Was she all right when you left home to come back to college?"

"Not exactly all right," answered Phil, and he seemed to be carefully picking his words, so slowly did he speak. "She had been in poor health for some time, and we thought a change of air would do her good. So father took her to Florida--a place near Palm Beach. I came on here, and I hoped to hear good news. Now--now----" He could not proceed, and turned away.

Tom coughed unnecessarily loud, and Sid seemed to have suddenly developed a most tremendous cold. He had to go to the window to look out, probably to see if it was getting colder. In doing so he knocked from a chair a football, which bounded erratically about the room, as the spherical pigskin always does bounce. The movements of it attracted the attention of all, and mercifully came as a relief to their overwrought nerves.

"Well," said Sid, as he blew his nose with seemingly needless violence, "I suppose you'll have to give up football now; for you'll go to Florida."

"Yes," said Phil simply, "of course I shall go. I think I'll wire dad first, though, and tell him I'm going to start."

"I'll take the message to the telegraph office for you," offered Tom eagerly.

"No, let me go," begged Sid. "I can run faster than you, Tom."

"That's a nice thing to say, especially when I'm going to try for end on the 'varsity eleven," said Tom a bit reproachfully. "Don't let Holly Cross or Coach Lighton hear you say that, or I'll be down and out. I'm none too good in my running, I know, but I'm going to practice."

"Oh, I guess you'll make out all right," commented Phil. "I'm much obliged to you fellows. I guess I can take the message myself, though," and he sat down at the littered table, pushing the things aside, to write the dispatch.

Tom and Sid said little when Phil went out to take the telegram to the office. The two chums, one on the old patched sofa and the other in the creaking chair, which at every movement sent up a cloud of dust from the ancient cushion, maintained a solemn silence. Tom did remark once:

"Tough luck, isn't it?"

To which Sid made reply:

"That's what it is."

But, then, to be understood, you don't need to talk much under such circumstances. In a little while footsteps were heard along the corridor.

"Here he comes!" exclaimed Tom, and he arose from the sofa with such haste that the new boards, which Phil had put on to strengthen it, seemed likely to snap off.

"Go easy on that, will you?" begged Sid. "Do you want to break it?"

"No," answered Tom meekly, and he fell to arranging his books, a task which Sid supplemented by piling the sporting goods indiscriminately in a corner. They wanted to be busy when Phil came in.

"Whew! You fellows are raising a terrible dust!" exclaimed Phil. He seemed more at his ease now. In grief there is nothing so diverting as action, and now that he had sent his telegram, and hoped to be able to see his mother shortly, it made the bad news a little easier to bear.

"Yes," spoke Tom; "it's Sid. He raises a dust every time he gets into or out of that chair. I really think we ought to send it to the upholsterer's and have it renovated."

"There'd be nothing left of it," declared Phil. "Better let well enough alone. It'll last for some years yet--as long as we are in Randall."

"Did you send the message?" blurted out Tom.

"Yes, and now I'll wait for an answer."

"Is it--will they have to--I mean--of course there's some danger in an operation," stammered Sid, blushing like a girl.

"Yes," admitted Phil gravely. "It is very dangerous. I don't exactly know what it is, but before she went away our family doctor said that if it came to an operation it would be a serious one. Now--now it seems that it's time for it. Dear old mother--I--I hope----" He was struggling with himself. "Oh, hang it all!" he suddenly burst out. "Let's get this room to rights. If--if I go away I'll have the nightmare thinking what shape it's in. Let's fix up a bit, and then go out and take a walk. Then it will be grub time. After that we'll go out and see if any more fellows have arrived."

It was good advice--just the thing needed to take their attention off Phil's grief, and they fell to work with a will. In a short time the room began to look something like those they had left.

"Here, what are you sticking up over there?" called Sid to Tom, as he detected the latter in the act of tacking something on the wall.

"I'm putting up a photograph," said Tom.

"A girl's, I'll bet you a new hat."

"Yes," said Tom simply. "Why, you old anchorite, haven't I a right to? It's a pity you wouldn't get a girl yourself!"

"Humph! I'd like to see myself," murmured Sid, as he carefully tacked up a calendar and a couple of football pictures.

"Oh, that's Miss Tyler's picture, isn't it?" spoke Phil.

"Yes."

Phil was sorting his books when from a volume of Pliny there dropped a photograph. Tom spied it.

"Ah, ha!" he exclaimed. "It seems that I'm not the only one to have girls' pictures. Say, but she's a good-looker, all right!"

"She's my sister Ruth," said Phil quietly.

"Oh, I beg your pardon," came quickly from Tom. "I--I didn't know."

"That's all right," spoke Phil genially. "I believe she is considered quite pretty. I was going to put her picture up on the wall, but since Sid objects to----"

"What's that?" cried the amateur misogynist. "Say, you can put that picture up on my side of the room if you like, Phil. I--I don't object to--to all girls' pictures; it's only--well--er--she's your sister--put her picture where you like," and he fairly glared at Tom.

"Wonders will never cease," quoted the 'varsity pitcher. "Your sister has worked a miracle, Phil."

"You dry up!" commanded Sid. "All I ask is, don't make the room a photograph gallery. There's reason in all things. Go ahead, Phil."

"The next thing he'll be wanting will be to have an introduction to your sister," commented Tom.

"I'd like to have both you fellows meet her," said Phil gravely. "You probably would have, only for this--this trouble of mother's. Now I suppose sis will have to leave Fairview and go to Palm Beach with me. I must take a run over this evening, and see her. She'll be all broken up." It was not much of a journey to Fairview, a railroad was well as a trolley line connecting the town of that name with Haddonfield.

The room was soon fitted up in fairly good shape, though the three chums promised that they would make a number of changes in time. They went to dinner together, meeting at the table many of their former classmates, and seeing an unusually large number of freshmen.

"There'll be plenty of hazing this term," commented Tom.

"Yes, I guess we'll have our hands full," added Sid.

Old and new students continued to arrive all that day. After reporting to the proper officials of the college there was nothing for them to do, save to stroll about, as lectures would not begin until the next morning, and then only preliminary classes would be formed.

"I think I'll go down to the office and see if any telegram has arrived for me," said Phil, as he and his chums were strolling across the campus.

"I hope you get good news," spoke Tom. "We'll wait for you in the room, and help you pack if you have to go."

"Thanks," was Phil's answer as he walked away.

"Well, Tom, I suppose you're going to be with us this fall?" asked Holly Cross, captain of the football eleven, as he spied Tom and Sid.

"I am if I can make it. What do you think?"

"Well, we've got plenty of good material for ends, and of course we want the best, and----"

"Oh, I understand," said Tom with a laugh. "I'm not asking any favors. I had my honors this spring on the diamond. But I'm going to try, just the same."

"I hope you make it," said Holly fervently. "We'll have some try-out practice the last of this week. Where's Phil? I've about decided on him for quarter-back."

"I don't believe he can play," remarked Sid.

"Not play!" cried Holly.

Then they told him, and the captain was quite broken up over the news.

"Well," he said finally, "all we can hope is that his mother gets better in time for him to get into the game with us. We want to do the same thing to Boxer Hall and Fairview at football as we did in baseball. I do hope Phil can play."

"So do we," came from Tom, as he and Sid continued on to their room.

It was half an hour before Phil came in, and the time seemed three times as long to the two chums in their new apartment. When he entered the room both gazed apprehensively at him. There was a different look on Phil's face than there had been.

"Well?" asked Tom, and his voice seemed very loud.

"Dad doesn't want me to come," was Phil's answer.

"Not come--why? Is it too----"

"Well, they've decided to postpone the operation," went on Phil. "It seems that she's a little better, and there may be a chance. Anyhow, dad thinks if sis and I came down it would only worry mother, and make her think she was getting worse, and that would be bad. So I'll not go to Florida."

"Then it's good news?" asked Sid.

"Yes, much better than I dared to hope. Maybe she'll get well without an operation. I feel fine, now. I'm going over to Fairview and tell my sister. Dad asked me to let her know. I feel ten years younger, fellows!"

"So do we!" cried Tom, and he seized his chum's hand.

"Let's go out and haze a couple of dozen freshmen," proposed Sid eagerly.

"You bloodthirsty old rascal!" commented Phil. "Let the poor freshies alone. They'll get all that's coming to them, all right. Well, I'm off. Hold down the room, you two."

Tom and Sid spent the evening in their apartment, after Phil had received permission to go to Fairview, Tom having entrusted him with a message to Madge Tyler. The two chums had a number of invitations to assist in hazing freshmen, but declined.

"We don't want to do it without Phil," said Tom, and this loyal view was shared by Sid.

Phil came back late that night, or, rather, early the next morning, for it was past midnight when he got to Randall College.

"Your friend Madge sends word that she hopes you'll take her to the opening game of the football season," said Phil to Tom, as he was undressing.

"Did you see her?" inquired Tom eagerly.

"Of course. Ruth sent for her. She's all you said she was, Tom."

"Oh!" spoke Tom in a curious voice, and then he was strangely silent. For Phil was a good-looking chap, and had plenty of money; and Tom remembered what friends Madge and Langridge had been. His sleep was not an untroubled one that night.

Two or three days more of general excitement ensued before matters were running smoothly at Randall. In that time most of the students had settled in their new rooms, the freshmen found their places, some were properly hazed, and that ordeal for others was postponed until a future date, much to the misery of the fledglings.

"Preliminary football practice to-morrow," announced Phil one afternoon, as he came in from the gymnasium and found Tom and Sid studying.

"That's good!" cried Tom. "Are you going to try, Sid?"

"Not this year. I've got to buckle down to studies, I guess. Baseball is about all I can stand."

"I hear Langridge is out of it, too," said Phil. "His uncle has put a ban on it. He's got to make good in lessons this term."

"Well, I think the team will be better off without him," commented Sid. "Not that he's a poor player, but he won't train properly, and that has a bad effect on the other fellows. It's not fair to them, either. Look what he did in baseball. We'd have lost the championship if it hadn't been for Tom."

"Oh, I don't know about that," modestly spoke the hero of the pitching box.

"Well, turn out in football togs to-morrow," went on Phil. "By the way, I hear that Langridge's new freshman friend--Gerhart--is going to try for quarter-back against me."

"What! that fellow who was with him when we were moving our sofa in?" asked Tom.

"That's the one."

"Humph! Doesn't look as if he was heavy enough for football," commented Sid.

"You can't tell by the looks of a toad how much hay it can eat," quoted Phil.

The following afternoon a crowd of sturdy lads, in their football suits, thronged out on the gridiron, which was the baseball field properly put in shape. The goal posts had been erected, and Coach Lighton and Captain Cross were on hand to greet the candidates.

"Now, fellows," said the coach, "we'll just have a little running, tackling, passing the ball, some simple formations and other exercises to test your wind and legs. I'll pick out four teams, and you can play against each other."