Kitabı oku: «Center Rush Rowland», sayfa 3
CHAPTER IV
FOUND – A ROOMMATE
“Now I guess you’ll behave yourself,” exclaimed the landlady triumphantly. “Here’s the young man that’s taken the room.”
“He hasn’t any right to it,” declared the boy on the trunk, gripping the bag on his knees more firmly. “You gave me the refusal of it! I told you I’d be back! It’s my room, and I mean to keep it!”
Ira looked inquiringly at Mrs. Magoon, but she silently referred him to the claimant in the doorway.
“What’s wrong?” Ira asked of the latter.
“Why, I came here this afternoon and looked at this room and I asked this – this lady if she’d give me the refusal of it until evening and she said she would. I agreed to come back in any case and say whether I’d take it or not. And now, when I send my trunk here, she tells me she’s rented it to you!”
“I gave him no refusal,” exclaimed Mrs. Magoon irately. “He said he’d be back, yes, but he didn’t know whether he wanted it or didn’t want it. And I can’t be losing the chance to rent my rooms while he’s making up his mind.”
“Well, if you didn’t have a refusal,” said Ira mildly, “I don’t see what claim you have. I found the room for rent and took it this afternoon, and paid two weeks in advance. I’m sorry, but I guess you’ll have to look somewhere else.”
“I have looked!” cried the other. “There aren’t any rooms left. This is all there is. I’ve been all over the crazy place.”
“Oh, I guess you can find one tomorrow,” said Ira soothingly. “Why don’t you get a lodging for tonight somewhere and then start fresh in the morning? I’ve got a list of houses here – ”
“I’ve been all through the list. Everyone’s full up. Anyway, this is my room, and I mean to have it. She did give me the refusal of it, and she knows plaguey well she did!”
“The idea!” exclaimed Mrs. Magoon in shrill tones. “Calling me a liar to my face, are you? If you don’t get right out of here this very minute I’ll call a policeman, I will so!”
“Wait a minute,” counselled Ira. “He didn’t mean it that way. Now I tell you what we’ll do.” He glanced across the corridor to where a door had just opened to emit a large youth who was now regarding them with his hands in his pockets and a broad smile on his face. “You let this chap and me talk it over quietly, Mrs. Magoon. We’ll settle it between us. There’s no reason to get excited about it, is there? Just you go on down, ma’am, and it’ll be all right.”
“There’s only one way it can be settled,” replied the landlady irately, “and that’s for him to take himself and his trunk out of my house!”
“But there’s no hurry, Mrs. Magoon. Besides, we’re disturbing the others with all this racket. Shove that trunk inside, please, and we’ll close the door first of all.”
Mrs. Magoon grunted, hesitated and finally went grumbling off down the stairs, and Ira, taking affairs into his own hands, pushed the small trunk out of the way of the door, its owner grudgingly vacating his strategic position atop, and closed the portal, to the disappointment of the neighbour across the way.
“Now,” said Ira pleasantly, “sit down and be comfortable. Try the armchair. What’s your name? Mine’s Rowland.”
“Mine’s Nead,” replied the other, not very amiably. “Names haven’t anything to do with it, though.”
“Just wanted to know what to call you. Now, honest-to-goodness, Nead, did Mrs. Magoon say she’d hold this room until you had decided?”
“She did! If it’s the last word I ever utter – ”
“All right! And, if you don’t mind telling me, how much were you to pay for it?”
“Thirteen dollars and a half a month.”
Ira did some mental calculating and smiled. “That’s about three dollars a week, isn’t it?” he asked. “You’re certain that was the price?”
“Of course I’m certain. Three dollars was all I wanted to pay, and I told her so. She wanted four at first. Four dollars for this – this old poverty-stricken attic!”
“Oh, I wouldn’t be hard on it,” said Ira pleasantly. “I like it pretty well.”
“But it isn’t yours! Now you look here, Boland – ”
“Rowland. And don’t let’s have any melodrama, please. We can come to a settlement if we don’t shout, I guess. What you agreed to and what Mrs. Magoon agreed to is no business of mine. That’s between you two. She says the room is mine. You say it’s yours. I’ve got it!”
“You haven’t any right – ”
“Well, there’s the right of possession,” chuckled Ira. “Mind you, I’m inclined to believe your account of what took place, because – well, I’m beginning to doubt Mrs. Thingamabob’s – er – memory. But I think you left it pretty late to decide, Nead. If I’d been Mrs. Magoon I’d have considered myself released from that refusal by six o’clock; by seven, anyway. You couldn’t have got here until half-past, I guess.”
“I had to get something to eat and then find a man to fetch my trunk – ”
“Yes, but you could have dropped around before and told her you’d take it. You see, Nead, if you hadn’t wanted it, and she had stood by her bargain until nearly eight, she might not have rented it at all. There’s that to consider.”
“Oh, you make me tired! You talk like a – like a lawyer! She said I could have the room and I’ve come for it and that’s all there is to it!”
“Well, what about me?” inquired Ira mildly.
“You can find another one. You can do what you told me to do. If you think it’s so easy, just take a try at it!”
“If I thought you really had a right to this room I’d do it,” answered Ira, “but I don’t. At least, not a convincing one. Tell you, though, what I will do, Nead. I’ll get Mrs. Magoon to fix up some sort of a cot or something and you can stay here until tomorrow. It’s pretty late to go room hunting now and that’s a fact. Or maybe she has another room that she will let you have overnight. We’ll go down and ask her.”
“But I tell you it’s my room, Boland! I don’t care whether you think I have any right to it or not. I know that I have. I know that I was given a refusal of it until evening – ”
“What do you call evening?” interrupted Ira.
“Oh, if you’re going to split hairs – ”
“I’m not, but if I said evening I’d have some time like sunset in mind. The fact is, Nead, you didn’t make sure that there was nothing better until just before you came around here. And if you had found anything better you would never have shown up here again. And you know that’s so, too. I’m perfectly willing to share the room with you tonight, but I’m not going to get out of it. I’m sorry the misunderstanding happened, but it isn’t any fault of mine. Now, what do you say to making the best of things and bunking out here until morning?”
Nead observed Ira gloweringly, and for a long moment made no answer, and in that moment Ira had a good look at him. He was at least a full year younger than Ira, a thin, rather peevish looking youth with a poor complexion. His features were not bad, and he had rather nice eyes, but there was something unpleasant about his expression. He wore good clothes, but wore them carelessly, and Ira noted that his tan shoes looked as if they had not seen polish for many days. On the whole, Ira felt no enthusiasm about having Nead for a roommate even overnight.
“Well, I’ll stay here, I suppose,” said Nead ungraciously. “But I’m not giving up my claim on the room. Tomorrow I mean to go to the Principal and tell him about it. I guess he will see that I get what belongs to me.”
“All right! That’s settled for the present, anyway. Now I’ll go down and interview Mrs. Magoon. If she hasn’t an empty room she can probably find us a cot or a mattress. You can come along if you like,” he ended questioningly.
But Nead shook his head. “She will only get mad again if I go,” he said. “Besides,” he added, tossing his hat to the table and stretching himself more comfortably in the plush chair, “it’s not up to me. I’m at home already.”
“Glad you feel that way,” replied Ira gravely. “I’ll be back in a shake.”
He found Mrs. Magoon more complaisant than he had expected. There was, she recalled, a cot in the attic, but he would have to bring it down himself. And having an extra person in the room would be fifty cents a day. Ira, however, gently but firmly negated that, pointing out that she had got herself into the fix and that it was nothing to do with him, and finally the landlady agreed to waive remuneration. Ten minutes later, not very enthusiastically aided by Nead, he had the cot set up. There was a rather sketchy mattress on it and Mrs. Magoon grudgingly furnished two sheets and a blanket. By that time Nead had got over his grouch to some extent and was displaying a few human qualities.
“I thought I was going to have a room in one of the dormitories,” he explained, divesting himself of his outer clothing and depositing it helter-skelter around the room. “I wouldn’t have come if I’d known I had to room off the campus. Why, you can get a fine study in Leonard Hall for a hundred and twenty-five for the year, and that’s only about three dollars a week. They ought to have enough dormitories here and not make fellows live around in dives like this. Gee, some of the prices they talked today would make your hair stand up! One place I went to asked six dollars for a room not half the size of this. It was furnished, though, which you can’t say of this place. She’s put some more things in here since I saw it, though.”
“Bought ’em myself,” said Ira.
“Bought them! But they look second-hand!”
“N-no, I don’t guess so. Third-hand, maybe, or fourth, but hardly second, Nead. Still, they’re all right, aren’t they? How do you like the window seat?”
“Window seat? Is that what you call it?” Nead laughed. “Say, what’s the matter with it? Why does it shoot out like that?”
“It used to be straight,” answered Ira soberly, “but it’s rather old and has rheumatism. That explains the crook in it.”
“Huh! It looks mighty silly. If you expect me to buy this trash off you you’ve got another guess coming.”
“I don’t, thanks. It’s not for sale. Especially the window seat. I’m sort of fond of that.” He chuckled. “It’s so – so foolish looking!”
Nead viewed him in puzzlement. “Well, if you like foolish things, all right,” he said finally, dipping into his bag for his pyjamas. “I don’t, though. Say, where do you come from?”
“Maine. How about you?”
“Buffalo.”
“Dakota?” inquired Ira blandly.
“Dakota! Of course not, you idiot! There isn’t any Buffalo in Dakota. New York, of course.”
“There used to be. Maybe they’re all killed now, though. Buffalo’s quite a big place, I suppose.”
“It’s big enough, anyway. And it’s the best city in the country.”
“Sort of like this place, then, I guess.”
“What!”
“Well, you said it was a city in the country, didn’t you?” asked the other innocently. “And that’s what this is. I’d call it that, at least.”
“You go and see Buffalo some time,” advised Nead disgustedly. “I guess you live in the country, all right.” He grinned at the nightgown that Ira was getting into. “Don’t they have pyjamas up in Maine?”
“Not many. There’s a few raccoons left, though.”
“Oh, gee, you’re a smart guy, aren’t you? Well, I’m going to turn in. Hope you’ll find that cot comfortable, but it doesn’t look it!”
“Oh, you’re taking the bed, are you?”
“Sure,” chuckled Nead. “It’s mine, isn’t it?”
“It’s yours for tonight,” was the answer. “If I have the nightmare, just yell. I usually wake up. Good night.”
Ira slept soundly in spite of the discomforts of that wobbly, creaking cot, and when he awoke the early sunlight was slanting in at the windows behind the new curtains. Across the room Nead was still asleep. Reference to his watch showed the time to be but a few minutes past six. Ira turned over stiffly and tried to slumber again, but after ten minutes of unsuccessful effort he gave it up, rolled over on his back, put his arms over his head, fixed his gaze on an interesting crack that travelled from one side of the ceiling to the other with as many ramifications as a trunk-line railway and faced the problem presented by the unconscious form on the bed.
There was a freshness and coolness in the morning air that made for well-being, and Ira felt extremely kindly toward the world, even including Nead and the pugnacious Gene Goodloe. He wondered whether the latter would see fit to follow up the little affair of yesterday, and remembered that he hadn’t sent him word of his whereabouts. He would write Goodloe a note as soon as he got dressed. As far as he was personally concerned, he was ready to call quits. It was much too wonderful a day for fighting! Then he speculated about Mart Johnston and wondered whether Mart would look him up. He didn’t care a whole lot. Mart was a cheerful sort of idiot, but he wasn’t exactly restful! And Mart had so many friends, besides that chap “Brad,” that it wasn’t likely he would recall the existence of the boy who was thinking of him except, perhaps, to laugh at him. And, finally, there was Nead.
Nead was a problem, and Ira scowled at the crack in the ceiling and tried to solve it. Perhaps, after all, Nead did have a good claim on that room. Ira tried to see the affair from Nead’s point of view. It was rather puzzling. He didn’t quite know what he ought to do. Of course, he might follow Nead’s idea and leave the decision to the faculty, but it seemed a trivial affair to bring to its attention. Or he might —
He brought his gaze suddenly from the ceiling and stared blankly at the window for a moment. Then he turned and regarded the sleeping countenance of the boy across the room. In slumber Nead didn’t look so unpleasant, he thought. And living alone would be, perhaps, rather lonesome. Certainly, could he have his choice of roommates the choice wouldn’t fall of Nead, but he couldn’t. And maybe Nead would improve on acquaintance. Ira had already discovered that first impressions are frequently erroneous. There was, too, the advantage of having someone share the expense, although Ira wasn’t greatly concerned about that. He weighed the question for some time, lying in bed there, and finally made up his mind. He would make the proposition to Nead. If Nead wasn’t agreeable, why, Nead could find another room. Ira considered that he would then have done all that was required of him. He plunged out of bed and, gathering up towel and sponge and soap, made his descent on the bathroom.
CHAPTER V
SCHOOL BEGINS
It was all settled by the time they had finished breakfast. Perhaps the cheerfulness of the morning, or it may have been Mrs. Magoon’s coffee, worked its effect on Nead, for that youth was far more amiable, and, while he did hesitate and seem a bit dubious for a moment, he ended by accepting the proposition. Ira found himself hoping that he wouldn’t and took the other’s hesitation as a good augury, but put aside all regrets the moment Nead made his decision.
“That’s all right, then,” he declared. “Now we’ll have to make a dicker with Mrs. Magoon, I guess, for she’ll want more for the room if there’s two in it.”
“I don’t see why,” objected Nead. “Anyway, we oughtn’t to pay more than four a week.”
“I think four would be enough,” Ira agreed. “And what about breakfasts? She charges a quarter apiece, you know.”
“And they’re pretty punk, if this is a sample,” said Nead. “The coffee’s all right, but my chop had seen better days. Still, it’s easier than hunting a restaurant. I thought maybe I’d eat in school. They say you get mighty good feed at Alumni Hall.”
“Well, we’ll tell her we’ll take two breakfasts for awhile. That will cheer her up, maybe. Shall I make the dicker?”
“Yes, she doesn’t like me. And I don’t like her. So that’s even. What class are you going into, Rowland?”
“Third, unless I trip up. What’s yours?”
“Second. Wish we were in the same. It makes it easier if you’re with a fellow who’s taking the same stuff. There’s another thing, too; that bed’s fierce. See if she hasn’t got a better mattress.”
“I was going to buy one,” said Ira. “I guess hers are all about the same, don’t you?”
“Well, make a stab,” said Nead. “She may have one that hasn’t been slept on twenty years. What are the other fellows here like?”
“Don’t know. I’ve seen only one, the fat fellow across the hall. There must be quite a lot of them, because she says she has all the rooms rented, and there are four rooms on each floor.”
“Nine rooms altogether,” Nead corrected. “There’s one on the ground floor at the back that she rents. It’s behind the spring-water place. I suppose there are two in some rooms. Must be twelve or fourteen fellows in this dive, eh?”
“Maybe,” agreed Ira, pushing away from the walnut table on which the breakfast tray had been placed. “Do you know any fellows in school?”
“No, do you?”
“Only one, a fellow named Johnston. I ran across him yesterday and he told me about this place. They call it ‘Maggy’s.’ I’d been to about six before that and couldn’t find anything I liked. Well, I’ll go down and – Hold on, though! I must write a note first.”
He got a tablet and pulled a chair to the desk, and after wrinkling his forehead a moment, wrote: “Mr. Eugene Goodloe, Parkinson School, Warne, Mass. Dear Sir: I have a room at Mrs. Magoon’s, 200 Main Street, third floor back on the left. A note addressed to me here will find me and I shall be glad to meet any appointment you care to make. Respectfully, Ira Rowland.” Then he enclosed it, stamped the envelope and dropped it in his pocket.
“That’s what I must do, I suppose,” remarked Nead. “I told my folks I’d write last night, but I forgot it. Guess I’ll scribble a note while you’re talking to the old girl downstairs. Let me use your pen, will you? Mine’s in the trunk.”
“Sorry, Nead,” replied Ira, “but that’s something I won’t do. I’ll lend you about anything but my fountain pen.”
“Oh, all right,” said the other haughtily. “I’ve got a better one of my own. Just didn’t want to look for it.”
The interview with Mrs. Magoon was a long-drawn-out ceremony. In the first place, she was not eager to have Nead as a tenant. When she had finally agreed to it, she held out for four dollars and a half a week until Ira informed her that they would each want breakfasts. Four dollars a week was at last agreed on. In the matter of mattresses, however, she was adamant. More, she was even insulted. “That mattress has been on that bed for six years,” she said indignantly, “and nobody’s ever said anything against it before. Anyhow, I ain’t got any better one.”
“All right, ma’am. And how about another bed in there?”
“You can keep that cot, I guess. I ain’t got another bed.”
“But the cot’s as hard as a board!” exclaimed Ira. “It hasn’t any mattress; just a – a sort of pad!”
“Well, I don’t know what I can do,” replied the lady. “I can’t afford to go and buy a lot of new things. It’s all I can do to get along as it is, with rents as low as they are. That room ought to fetch me six dollars a week, it should so. And I’m only getting four for it. And the price of everything a body has to buy is going up all the time. I don’t know what we’re coming to!”
“Suppose I buy a cheap single bed and mattress,” suggested Ira. “Will you take it off my hands when I move out?”
“I might. It wouldn’t be worth full price, though, young man, after being used a year or more.”
“No, that’s so. Suppose you pay me half what it costs me? Would that do?”
“Why, yes, I guess ’twould. But don’t go and buy an expensive one. I wouldn’t want to put much money into it.”
“Well, I dare say I can get a bed for six dollars and a mattress for ten, can’t I?”
“Land sakes! I should hope you could! You can get an iron bed for four dollars and a half that’s plenty good enough and a mattress for six. You go to Levinstein’s on Adams Street. That’s the cheapest place. Ask for Mr. Levinstein and tell him I sent you. I buy a lot from him. Leastways, I used to. I ain’t bought much lately, what with times so hard and rents what they are and everything a body has to have getting to cost more every day. I mind the time when – ”
But Ira had flown, and Mrs. Magoon’s reminiscences were muttered to herself as she made her way down to the mysterious realms of the basement.
Nead flatly refused to spend any money for bed or mattress, but agreed to go halves on the furniture that Ira had already purchased and on anything it might be necessary to buy later. “You see,” he explained, “it will be your bed, and I won’t get anything out of it. Maybe I might swap mattresses with you if I like yours better, though,” he concluded with a laugh.
“You just try it!” said Ira grimly.
He purchased the bed and mattress before first recitation hour, paying, however, more than Mrs. Magoon had advised. After testing the six-dollar mattresses Ira concluded that there was such a thing as mistaken economy! After leaving Levinstein’s he remembered the letter in his pocket and dropped it into a pillar box and then hustled for school.
He was somewhat awed by the magnificence of Parkinson Hall as he made his way up the steps and entered the rotunda. It still lacked ten minutes of first hour, which was nine o’clock, and the entrance and the big, glass-domed hall were filled with groups of waiting fellows. He found a place out of the way and looked about him interestedly. The rotunda was a chamber of spaciousness and soft, white light. The stone walls held, here and there, Latin inscriptions – Ira tried his hand at one of them and floundered ingloriously – and there were several statues placed at intervals. A wide doorway admitted at each side to the wings, and into one of the corridors he presently ventured. There were three doors to his right and as many to his left, each opened and showing a cheerfully bright and totally empty classroom, and at the end of the corridor was a stairway leading to the floor above. About that time a gong clanged and, with a hurried and surreptitious glance at the schedule card in his pocket, Ira began a search for Room L. A small youth in short trousers came to his assistance and he found it at the end of the opposite wing. He had rather hoped to run across Mart Johnston, but it was not until he had taken a seat in the recitation room that he saw that youth several rows nearer the front. Mart didn’t see him, however, for he was busily engaged in whispering to a good-looking, dark-complexioned fellow beside him whom Ira surmised to be “Brad.” The whispering, which was general, suddenly died away and the occupants of the seats, fully a half-hundred in number, Ira judged, arose to their feet and began to clap loudly. Ira followed suit without knowing the reason for the demonstration until he caught sight of a tall, thin figure in black making its way up the side aisle toward the platform. Then he clapped louder, for the figure was that of Professor Addicks, and Ira already had a soft spot in his heart for the pleasant-voiced man who had spoken so kindly to him the day before.
Professor Addicks bowed and smiled, standing very straight on the platform with one gnarled hand on the top of the desk. “It gives me much pleasure to see you young gentlemen all back here again and all looking so well,” said he. “I trust you have spent a pleasant Summer and that you have returned eager for work – and play. Someone – was it not our own Mark Twain? – said that play is what we like to do, work what we have to do. But he didn’t say that we can’t make play of our work, young gentlemen. I can think of nothing that would please me more than to overhear you say a few years from now: ‘I had a good time at Parkinson. There was football, you know, and baseball and tennis; and then there was Old Addicks’ Greek Class!’”
A roar of laughter greeted that, laughter in which the Professor joined gently.
“Oh, I know what you call me,” he went on smilingly. “But I like to think that the term ‘Old’ is applied with some degree of – may I say affection?”
Clapping then, and cries of “Yes, sir!”
“Age, young gentlemen, has its advantages as well as its disadvantages, and amongst them is the accumulation of experiences, which are things from which we gain knowledge. I am old enough to have had many experiences, and I trust that I have gained some slight degree of knowledge. I make no boast as to that, however. In fact, I find that I am considerably less certain of my wisdom now than I was when I was many years younger. Looking back, I see that the zenith of my erudition was reached shortly after I had attained the age of the oldest of you, that is, at about the age of twenty-one years. Today I am far more humble as to my attainments. But, young gentlemen, there is one thing that I have learned and learned well, and that is this: each of us can make his work what he pleases, a task or a pleasure. Some of you won’t believe that now, but you’ll all learn eventually that it is so. And if you make your work a task you are putting difficulties in your own way, whereas if you make it a pleasure you are automatically increasing your power for work. If it is a pleasure you want to do it, and what we want to do we do with a will. Therefore, young gentlemen, bring sufficient of the element of play to your studies to make them agreeable. You go through hard and difficult exertions for the exercise of your bodies and call it fun. Why, then, pull a long face when you approach the matter of exercising your minds? If one is play, why not the other? A word to the wise is sufficient. I have given you many words. Let us consider the pleasures before us.”
There was no class work that day, and after they had had the morrow’s lessons indicated and had listed the books required for the courses in Greek and Latin the fellows departed to gather again in another room before another instructor. By noon Ira had faced all his instructors, his head was swimming with a mass of information as to hours, courses of reading and so on, and he had made quite a formidable list of books and stationery to be purchased. He returned to Mrs. Magoon’s and spent a half-hour filling in a schedule card, and then, as Nead hadn’t returned, set off by himself to The Eggery for dinner. Now that the big school dining room was open in Alumni Hall, The Eggery was rather deserted as to students. The bulk of the patrons today were clerks and shopkeepers.
After dinner he made various purchases of scratch-pads, blue-books, pencils and similar articles, bought several books at a second-hand store and paid a visit to the First National Bank of Warne. There he made a deposit of all the money he had with him save enough change to meet immediate demands, signed his name where the teller pointed and emerged the proud possessor of his first check book. By that time it was nearly three, and, having nothing especial to interest him, he crossed the campus, made his way around Parkinson Hall and past the little laboratory building and found himself facing the broad expanse of level and still verdant turf known as the Playfield.
There was some twelve acres here, in shape a rectangle, with one corner cut off by Apple Street, which began at the end of Linden Street and proceeded at a tangent to the Cumner Road, the latter forming the northern boundary of the field. Directly in front of Ira were the tennis courts, a dozen in all, of which half were clay and half turf. To the right of the courts was a quarter-mile running track enclosing the gridiron and beyond that were the baseball diamonds, three in number. A sizeable grandstand flanked the gridiron and a smaller one stood behind the home-plate of the ’varsity diamond. Already the playfield was well sprinkled with fellows. Several white-clad youths were practising flights over the high-hurdles, another was jogging around the farther turn of the track, the tennis courts were fairly well occupied and the football candidates were beginning to emerge from the nearby gymnasium and gather in front of the stand.
Ira stopped and watched the tennis for awhile and then gave his attention to the hurdlers. He had never seen hurdlers in action before and he looked on with interest while one after another went springing by with long strides and queer steps; stride, stride, stride, step and over; stride, stride, stride, step and over! Ira wondered what would happen if he ran up to one of those barriers and tried to stick one leg across and double the other one behind him. He chuckled at the mental picture he got! One of the hurdlers interested him particularly. He was a much shorter and chunkier lad than the others; in age probably seventeen. There was no useless flesh on him, but he was very solidly built and had more weight than the usual boy of his age. As a hurdler he was persevering rather than brilliant. He struck four hurdles out of the ten invariably, each time throwing himself out of his stride and just saving himself from a fall, but he finished through with a fine, dogged patience, rested and went at it again.
“If,” thought Ira, “I was selecting a fellow to win one of these hurdle races I wouldn’t pick him, but if I was choosing a chap to – to hunt for the South Pole or take on a hard job and finish it I guess he’d be the one!”
When the hurdlers had picked up their sweaters and gone panting back to the gymnasium Ira turned toward the grandstand. By this time a half-hundred boys in football togs were assembled on the field, while twice that number were seated in the stand to watch the first practice of the year. Ira found a seat a little removed from the throng and viewed the gathering. Even as he turned his eyes toward the candidates their number was increased by the arrival of some eighteen or twenty others accompanied by a man of perhaps thirty years whose air of authority plainly stamped him as the coach. By his side was a strapping youth with broad shoulders, a slim waist and sturdy legs who was quite as plainly the captain. He had tawny hair, light eyes and a lean, sun-browned face that, without being handsome, was striking. He looked, Ira decided, like a born leader. And those shoulders and that deep chest and the powerful legs under the brown-and-white ringed stockings suggested that he was as capable physically as any other way. A rotund man in brown denim overalls pushed a wheelbarrow around the corner of the stand and from it unloaded a surprising amount of paraphernalia; a canvas bag containing a half-dozen scuffed footballs, many grey blankets, a water bucket and several shining new tin dippers, head-guards, several pairs of shoes, a bunch of leather laces, a nickel-plated horn with a rubber bulb attached and a leather case whose contents were not divulged that afternoon but which Ira later discovered to hold adhesive tape, bandages, phials and similar first-aid requisites.
