Part 7

Jonesie opened promptly, the picture of smiling innocence. And he spoke _so_ convincingly! “Mr. Mundy, I really think you’d ought to do something about him, sir,” he said concernedly. “He comes in here and tells the strangest stories and accuses me of annoying him. He says I go into his room and disarrange his things when he’s out. He even says I do it when he’s in bed. He’s threatened to lick me, sir.” Cummings, listening beyond the door, shook a fist helplessly. “You know that isn’t right, sir,” pleaded Jonesie. “He says himself he locks the room up tight. I ask you, sir, how I could get in there if I wanted to.”

“Quite so, Jones, quite so, but――ahem――hasn’t there been some ill-feeling between you two recently?”

“Why, he came in here and swiped a composition of mine off the table and read it to the fellows and had a laugh on me, but that was days ago and I don’t care anything about it _now_, sir. If he’d just stop having these――these hallucinations of his――――”

“Hallucinations, eh?” Mr. Mundy repressed a smile. “I wonder.” He sauntered to the communicating door and studied it attentively. He even lifted the large and brilliant calendar and looked behind it, and Jonesie, watching politely and imperturbably, blinked twice. Then Mr. Mundy gazed at the place where the knob should have been.

“Where’s the knob?”

“I don’t know, sir. It’s been gone a long while.”

“Hm.” The instructor seemed about to ask a second question, but changed his mind. Instead, he threw his weight against the door. It didn’t even creak. He turned to Jonesie.

“When was the last time you were in Cummings’s room?” he asked suddenly.

“About nine weeks ago, sir. It was before Christmas recess.”

“That’s the absolute truth, Jones?”

“Oh, yes, sir!” Jonesie looked slightly hurt.

“Very well. That’s all. If I were you I’d――ahem――I’d find that knob, Jones. Or one like it.”

The door closed behind the instructor and Jonesie subsided in the nearest chair, grinning like the famous Cheshire Cat.

Next door Mr. Mundy spoke firmly but kindly to Cummings. “If I were you,” he said, “I’d go in for some sort of regular exercise besides your gymnasium work. Be out of doors more, Cummings. You might take a good long walk every day; three or four miles. Aren’t worrying about anything, are you?”

“I’m worrying about having my room upset every time I turn my back,” said the boy excitedly. “That’s what――――”

“Yes, yes,” soothed Mr. Mundy. “But I think if you’ll follow my advice regarding the walks and being out of doors you’ll find that――ahem――your worries will cease. About three miles to-day, to start with, eh? And drop in this evening and tell me where you went and what you saw.” He nodded encouragingly and departed.

Oddly enough, Cummings did just what Jonesie had done a minute before. That is, he subsided into a chair. But he didn’t grin. He groaned. “_Three miles!_” he muttered. “_Great Scott!_”

But he did them. He didn’t dare not to. And when he stumbled back, at five, foot-sore and aching from the unaccustomed effort, he found his study sickeningly confused. “It’s fine for _him_,” he thought bitterly. “He knows I’m safe out of the way for an hour. Mundy makes me sick!”

Supper that evening was torture, for he was tired and discouraged to start with and everyone he met asked about his spooks. He lost his temper completely with Turner and that youth had the cheek to read him a lecture on manners. He anticipated some satisfaction in reporting to Mr. Mundy that his walk had not prevented the “pieing” of his study, but the instructor told him that he mustn’t expect his prescription to work so soon. “Keep on, Cummings,” he said cheerfully. “It’ll soon tell. Try four miles to-morrow.”

But Cummings was through. He climbed wearily upstairs and knocked at Number 14. “When do you want to quit, Jonesie?” he asked humbly.

“I won’t pretend to ignorance of your meaning,” replied Jonesie grandly. “I’ve been thinking about your case, Cummings, and I’ve solved it.” Cummings moistened his lips but said nothing. “It’s your conscience that’s at the bottom of all this, old man. I believe that if you clear your conscience you’ll stop imagining things.”

“Imagining!” gasped Cummings.

Jonesie nodded. “You have something on your conscience, haven’t you? You’ve done something you’re sorry for? Something you repent of, Cummings?”

Cummings nodded, all fight gone. “I guess so,” he muttered. “I――I’m sorry, Jonesie. I apologize.”

“For what?”

“You know. Reading that composition.”

“Oh! Why, I’d most forgotten that. So many things have happened since to――to vary the _monotony_, Cummings. But it’s decent of you to apologize, old man. And I accept it. I never hold grudges, Cummings. That’s not my way. If I can’t show fellows somehow that they have made a mistake, why, I forget it. So _that’s_ all right.”

“And――and it won’t happen again?” pleaded Cummings.

“Not if my theory is right, old dear, and I think it is. In fact I almost think I can promise, Cummings, that it won’t happen again.”

It didn’t. Jonesie’s theory was vindicated.

Three days later “Sparrow” Bowles returned from the infirmary, and one of the first things he did was to take exception to Jonesie’s beautiful calendar. But if he hoped to start something he was disappointed. “That’s all right,” said Jonesie, “take it down. I’m through with it, anyway.” So “Sparrow” removed it, and, having done so, regarded the door closely.

“Someone,” said “Sparrow,” “has been monkeying with this panel. Looks to me like it had been out. That’s funny!”

Jonesie yawned. “Maybe the heat’s loosened it,” he suggested.

A few days later “Sparrow” observed: “Hello, I didn’t know you had one of these electric torches.”

“There’s a lot you don’t know, son,” said Jonesie; adding to himself: “You don’t know what can be done with a fishing rod with a piece of wire on the end of it, for one thing!”

THE QUITTER

They were revising the line-up for the final game of the season, that with Fairfield, when Jack Groom entered: Coach Thornton, Payson Walsh, manager; Larry Logan, quarterback; and Jim Walsh, left guard. Had Tinker, the trainer, been on hand too, the Board of Football Strategy of Staunton School would have been, with Jack’s advent, complete. “Tink’s” absence, however, had been discounted: and the same was true of Jack, for none of those in the coach’s study had expected the captain to hobble all that half-mile between campus and village. There were four simultaneous exclamations of surprise when he appeared in the doorway.

“Oh, Doc says I’m out of it for good,” defended Jack. He lowered himself into a chair, leaned his crutches alongside and scowled malignantly at the bulky swathings of his right foot.

“Maybe, son, but you don’t want to have trouble with that ankle, even if you can’t play,” said Mr. Thornton.

“I’ve got all winter to coddle it,” Jack growled. “Shove that footstool over, Larry, will you? Well, what have you decided?”

“There wasn’t much to decide, Cap,” replied the coach. “With you out of it――――”

“Preston or Morely.”

“Exactly. And it’s Preston, to my mind.” There was a suggestion of challenge in Mr. Thornton’s voice. Jack glanced at the others. Logan nodded, and so did Payson Walsh, but his brother remained non-committal.

“Ted Morely played a pretty snappy game to-day after I came out,” suggested Jack.

“Oh, Morely’s all right,” agreed the coach, “but in my opinion Preston’s a better man to start the game Saturday. We’ve got to get the jump on Fairfield, Cap, and to do that we ought to start with the best we have. Morely’s smart and fast and――and snappy, but I consider Preston more dependable.”

“Sure,” said the manager. “Ted’s a quitter.”

Jack turned to him, but Jim Walsh was quicker. “Cut that, Pay,” he growled. “You never saw Ted Morely quit in your life.”

“Well, you know what I mean,” his brother protested. “Maybe he isn’t a quitter, exactly, but――he quits! Doesn’t he, now? Didn’t he lie down in the Fielding game? Oh, I know he did something to his shoulder, but he was all right the next morning. It couldn’t have been much. I like Ted, but when it comes to picking a right half for Saturday――――”

“The trouble is that he’s always getting hurt,” said Logan.

“He’s all right now,” Jack said. “He has had punk luck, I’ll grant you, but being laid up a couple of times hasn’t got anything to do with Saturday. And you say yourselves that he played a snappy game to-day.”

“I don’t believe it matters an awful lot,” said the coach. “It isn’t likely the chap who starts will finish, anyway. But you’re captain, and if you say Morely――――”

“I’m not captain any longer,” returned Jack. “Larry had better take it on, hadn’t he? As for using Ted, I haven’t anything to say. Only you’re wrong about him. He’s played in hard luck, that’s all. I knew him back home. He didn’t play football then, but he was always a mighty spunky chap, and I never saw anything that looked like quitting. He is a bit light, but he’s a fighter, and he can do more damage in a broken field than anyone we have. I’ve heard fellows say, or intimate, just what Pay said a minute ago; that Ted’s a quitter. It’s too bad, for it’s a rank injustice, and I’d like to see him have a chance to prove it. But I’m not going to insist on playing him. You’re running this show, Coach, and after this minute I’m not going to have another word to say about it. After this Larry’s captain. I’m out of it.”

“Field captain, of course,” said the coach. “You’re still the real captain, Jack, and we want your advice and your help as much as ever.”

“Nothing doing!” Jack shook his head. “You won’t hear me open my mouth again, Thornton. I’m off. Anyone going up?”

“I’ll go along, I guess,” said Jim Walsh. “You don’t need me any more, do you, Coach?”

“No, I guess not. We don’t have to decide about Morely until the game starts, anyway, Cap. If you still think――――”

“I’ve stopped thinking,” answered Jack, smiling, as he worked his crutches under his arm and, aided by Jim, swung himself up. “Good-night, everybody.”

“Hard luck,” said Payson Walsh as the departing couple passed down the short brick walk to the street and went off through the rustling leaves that lay thick on the sidewalk. “Poor Jack! I’ll bet he’s feeling perfectly rotten.”

“I know he is,” said Larry Logan. “When Jack doesn’t laugh once in a quarter of an hour――――” He shook his head eloquently.

“We’ll miss him Saturday,” mused the coach. “I don’t mean any reflection on you, Logan.”

“I know. A team always feels lost without its captain. It’s going to make a difference in our chances of winning, too. I still think we can pull it out, but――we’ll have to work harder to do it.”

“Funny to have it happen in a game like to-day’s,” grumbled the manager. “Why, it was the easiest game of the season!”

“You never can tell about that,” replied Logan. “You get hurt when you least expect it. Remember two years ago when Tommy Winship broke his arm in the gym? He didn’t fall three feet! Well――――” He stretched and yawned widely. “Gee, I’m tired! It was too blamed hot to-day for football.”

“Yes,” the coach agreed, absently. He was making meaningless marks on the edge of the paper before him. After a moment: “I suppose it would be a decent thing to please Jack under the circumstances and start Morely instead of Preston,” he said thoughtfully. “I don’t believe it would matter much, anyway.”

“Pleasing Jack isn’t what we’re here for,” said Payson Walsh, frowning. “We want to win a week from to-day, Coach. That’s our stunt. Ted Morely’s a sort of protegé of Jack’s, and Jack thinks Ted’s been misjudged, and he wants to give the chap a chance to prove it. He said so himself. But we’re not staging the contest for Morely’s benefit. If he’s got the reputation of being a quitter――and as a matter of fact he has, as you know, Larry――it’s his own fault. It isn’t up to us to worry. Preston’s the man for the job and I say, use him.”

The coach nodded. “You’re probably right,” he said.

Had Ted Morely known what was being said about him down in the village he would not have sped his pen so calmly over the paper, but, as it was, he was at peace with the world. He was writing of the afternoon’s game at length and with, perhaps, unnecessary detail, for his father and mother knew woefully little about football. Having reached the end of the third page, he laid down his pen and read over his effort.

“It was rotten luck for Jack, and everyone’s awfully sorry for him. They say he’s quite out of the Fairfield game. Isn’t that the limit? I haven’t seen him since they lugged him off the field, but I guess he’s beastly cut up about it. I took his place after he was hurt and played all of the fourth quarter. You know I’ve been fighting Preston all Fall, and now it looks like I’d won. Anyway, if Jack doesn’t play Saturday I’m bound to get in sooner or later, for Fairfield plays a stiff game and not many fellows last through. To-day we were 17 to their 7 when I went in and Thornton ran in a lot of subs and we only tried to hold the other fellow from scoring any more. You needn’t worry about my shoulder because it’s just as good as it ever was. I wouldn’t have said anything about it if it had been serious――――”

He scored that out heavily and wrote above it. “It was only a wrench and nothing to bother about. I’ve been in mean luck this Fall about getting bunged up. You remember I had tonsilitis when we played Camden High and then there was the time I sort of fainted at practice one day, but that was only something I’d eaten, the doctor said, and then hurting that old shoulder took me out of the Fielding game. I’ll bet you that if they let me play Saturday there won’t be anything the matter with me, or if there is no one will know it! We want to win this year pretty bad and the school’s made up its mind to do it, too. I wish you could see some of the meetings we’ve been having. Talk about enthusiasm, gee, no one’s got anything on us. Well, I’ll write again after the game and you’ll know then how it comes out. If you want to know before that you will find it in the Reading paper, I guess. Now I must stop and go to bed. I’ve written a pretty long letter for me. Lots of love to you both.”

He signed it “Your aff. son, Ted,” folded it away into the envelope, wrote the address and leaned the letter against the drop-light so that he would see it and remember to borrow a stamp from his room-mate and post it the next morning. Then, with a comfortable yawn, he arose and removed his jacket. In doing so he winced slightly, frowned and rubbed his left shoulder a moment before he began to wind the old-fashioned silver watch that had been his father’s and had descended to him on his sixteenth birthday, nearly a year ago. When his room-mate came in Ted was fast asleep and dreaming brave dreams.

Toward Jack Groom, Ted entertained an admiration that was closely akin to hero worship. Jack was not quite two years older, but to Ted he seemed more than that, and with liking went a respectful awe that to-day, the Sunday following the next to the last game of the Staunton schedule, kept Ted from doing what he really wanted to do, which was cross the yard to Fenton Hall and call on the captain. He wanted to let Jack know that he was horribly sorry about the accident and very sympathetic, but he was very much afraid of being thought presumptuous: only to himself Ted called it “fresh.” Ultimately he did go, but it was because Milton, Jack’s room-mate, hailed him after dinner with: “O Morely! Jack wants to see you. He’s over in the room. Run over now, will you?”

Jack was propped up on the window-seat when Ted entered, his offending foot pillowed before him. Ted’s condolences stumblingly uttered, Jack came to the reason for the summons. “I can’t play Saturday, Ted,” he announced, “and so I’ve dropped out of it entirely. Logan’s taken my place. I haven’t any more say about things. I wanted you to know that because it looks as if Preston would have the call over you. I think Thornton will start him Saturday. I’m sorry, Ted. I think you could play as good a game as Preston, maybe better, but Thornton thinks you’re a bit light. Of course, you’ll get in before the game’s over. You can’t help it, I guess. And, in any case, Thornton’ll see that you get your letter. I just wanted you to understand that it isn’t my doing, Ted.”

“Of course,” muttered the younger boy vaguely. “That’s all right, Jack. I――Preston――――” He paused and swallowed. “I guess he’s better than I am, Jack.”

“Piffle! Next year you’ll put it all over him. Don’t mind about Saturday, old man. You’ve got another year yet.”

Which, reflected Ted, retracing his steps under the leafless maples, was true but not very consoling at the moment. He wished he had not written home with so much assurance. Still, if anything happened to Preston early in the game――not that he wished Preston ill-luck, of course. That would be pretty low-down. But accidents did happen! However, he put that line of conjecture out of his mind presently and strove to find comfort in the patriotic reflection that if Preston was preferred by the coach it was with good reason and meant that Staunton’s chances of winning would be bettered. And, after all, what everyone wanted, Ted amongst them, was a victory over Fairfield. By Monday afternoon he had learned to accept the disappointment with a fair degree of philosophy.

The coach’s intentions were not apparent during practice, either that day or on any other of the remaining work days. Ted and Preston were used alternately at right half and no favoritism was discernible. Preston, thought Ted, was worried and nervous. The fight for supremacy was telling on him and Tuesday afternoon he called down the coaches’ condemnation by twice “gumming up” plays. Ted knew that he was thinking too hard about Saturday’s contest to do justice to himself. As for Ted, he had seldom played the position better. Certain that the struggle was over, the consequent relief allowed him to put all his mind on his game, with the result that he went at it in a hammer-and-tongs style that was almost spectacular. He managed to forget very completely that Saturday would find him on the bench instead of on the field, and got a lot of joy and satisfaction from the moment. But after practice on Tuesday he got to thinking about Preston, and when Fate arranged a meeting on the gymnasium steps he yielded to an impulse. He and Preston were always extremely polite to each other, formally friendly, as became antagonists who thoroughly respected each other.

“I say, Preston,” began Ted, “I――there’s something you ought to know. I heard it by――by accident, but I know it’s straight.” Preston looked politely curious. “Thornton’s decided on you to start the game,” blurted Ted. “I thought you’d like to know it. Now you won’t have to――to worry, you see.”

“Why, thanks, Morely, but――you’re not stringing me, are you? Where did you hear it?”

“I can’t tell you that, but it’s――official.”

“Oh! Well, but――it’s a bit tough on you, Morely. Maybe you’re wrong. You’d better wait and see.”

“I don’t need to.” Ted smiled. “I know. I’m telling you so you can――can buckle down to business, Preston. You see, I know what it is to have the other fellow on your mind all the time! One of us had to lose out, Preston, and it happens to be me. Thornton thinks I’m too light. I dare say he’s right. Anyway, he’s the doctor, and as long as we beat Fairfield I don’t mind. Much,” he added as a sop to Truth.

“Well, it’s mighty decent of you,” said Preston warmly. “You’ve certainly given me a dandy scrap, and I don’t mind telling you that you’ve had me worried pretty often. I hope you get your letter.”

“Thanks. Maybe I will. So long.”

The last practice was on Wednesday and was largely signal work, although the kickers had a fairly stiff session later. On Thursday the school marched over to the field and cheered and sang and the first team substitutes went through a twenty-minute contest with the second eleven. Ted didn’t see it, for he was sent back to the gymnasium with the first squad, but he could hear the onlookers cheering the disbanding second when the scrimmage was over. And a few minutes later, while he was tying his shoe-laces, the marching, enthusiastic horde grouped in front of the gymnasium entrance and cheered the players individually, and the coaches and the trainer and everyone else. Ted listened rather anxiously for his own name. It came presently. He was somehow very glad of that. He would have felt horribly disappointed had they left him out.

Fairfield descended on the scene in force Saturday noon and the Campus and the village and the road between were gay with the flaunting blue of the enemy. The day was an Indian summer day, still, warm and hazy in the distances. Ted trotted with the rest to the field at a quarter to two and went through the warming up stunts. Then he donned a blanket and watched while the rival captains met in mid-field and a coin spun glittering in the sunlight. Fairfield had won the toss and had elected to give the ball to Staunton, thus upsetting Coach Thornton’s prophecy.

“All right now,” announced the latter. He referred to the little red book he carried in a vest pocket. “Aikens, Breadwell, Boyd, Morris, Walsh, Denton, Conley, Logan, Moore, Preston and Farnsworth. On the run, fellows!”

Presently a whistle piped, the new brown pigskin arose high against the blue sky and the final test of the long season’s work was begun. The cheering had stilled on both sides of the field and some two thousand pairs of eyes followed the long flight of the ball. Then a Fairfield half-back had it and was dodging back up the gridiron. Breadwell almost got him, but he slipped past. Then Larry Logan wrapped two sturdy arms about the runner’s legs and brought him crashing to the yellowed turf. Fairfield came hard then and Ted watched anxiously as the Staunton line bent and buckled against the heavy assault. But the line didn’t break much and presently the ball was in air again. Then came the first trial of the Staunton wide-open attack, and a mighty shout arose as Moore burst through outside right guard and reeled past two white lines. Again Moore got through, and then the Fairfield defense solved the play and shifted to meet it, and Farnsworth, faking a kick and then plunging at the Fairfield left, was spilled behind his line. A forward pass failed and again the ball flew through the air, propelled by Farnsworth’s boot, and the teams raced down to the Blue’s thirty-yard line. That quarter ended without anything approaching a score, the honors even. But Thornton’s plan to “get the jump” on the enemy and score in the first few minutes of play had failed.

The second period was a repetition of the first, save that Fairfield had the ball once on Staunton’s twenty-two yards on a fourth down and missed a goal from the field by a bare half-foot margin. Ted trotted back to the gymnasium with the others and sat around in an atmosphere of steam and liniment and excitement and listened to the babel of voices. Jack was in uniform but had not joined the players for a moment, and it was Larry Logan who fumed and implored and advised. Coach Thornton looked confident and had little to say until just before half-time was up. Then he made a quietly forceful appeal and, at the end, called for a cheer. Thirty-two voices answered thunderously.