Durand ... walked deliberately back to the cushioned space.—Page 47.
The official reached out to stop the absorbed strugglers and bring them back to safer territory. But Durand suddenly straightened up, still clutching the legs of his bewildered antagonist, and lifted him on his shoulders like a bag of meal. Thus balanced head downward in the air, Frieze clung fast, not knowing what to do in the unusual predicament; while Durand with rare presence of mind walked deliberately back to the cushioned space and threw his helpless burden flat on the mattress with a force that carried the thrower himself in a somersault over the prostrate form.
A burst of spontaneous applause smote the timbers of the roof.
“Wasn’t that great!” cried Poole, turning with glowing face to Lindsay. “Why, if Durand had smashed him on the floor out there, he’d have broken every bone in the fellow’s body. That’s the bully thing about Durand: he always knows what he’s about. What a quarter-back he’d make if he were only big enough for the game! Just think what he’d be if he were as big as you are!”
“A second Nowell,” said Tompkins.
“Such a fellow would have a reputation in school, wouldn’t he?” asked Wolcott.
“You can bet your hat he would,” replied Tompkins, “and out of school, too.”
“Tommy knows,” observed Poole, with a meaning smile. “He’s pitched on a winning nine.”
“And never will again,” declared Tompkins, tragically.
The words were evidently spoken in jest, yet underneath, but half covered by the air of mock tragedy assumed, rang clear the real tone of bitter disappointment and regret. Poole said not a word in reply. Wolcott himself, unfamiliar as the school spirit still was to him, understood partially, and was silent. He had heard among the first items of school gossip that Tompkins, who had pitched for the school the year before, had failed his preliminaries and been forbidden by the Faculty to play again. The tale, related among a dozen others, had at the time made little impression on him. Now, with the example before him of the glory of what was really but minor athletic achievement; with these two gloomy faces beside him, heavy and despondent at the reminder of Tompkins’s disability, he got his first true notion of the serious part played by athletics in the life of the school.