In the Line

by Albertus T. Dudley

After the recitation, while Whitely was defending himself from the jeering congratulations of his friends, Strong found himself again at Salter’s side. This time he was in better humor for conversation.

“Well, Sal, what now?” he called jocosely after the dumpy figure mincing along with the peculiar gait which had suggested one of his nicknames. “Going to improve the shining hour, I suppose.”

“Yes,” replied Salter. “I’ve most of the German to do.” He hesitated a few moments, lifted a cautious glance toward Strong’s face, and added, “Don’t you want to come over?”

For an instant Strong stared in amazement. “Why, yes,” he said with a refreshing cordiality; “just wait till I get my books.”

Salter finished his preparation of the lesson that afternoon sufficiently early to have some minutes to devote to his visitor. It is a fact well known to schoolmasters that a pupil will often perceive the true inwardness of his fellow’s difficulty when the master has failed to discover it. To Salter things were so perfectly evident and clear in the lesson that it was a matter of interest to make out why they were not equally evident and clear to his companion. Before the recitation bell rang he thought he saw the obstacle; by the end of the Latin hour on the following day he was sure of it. Strong had a superficial quickness in learning forms and elements which had prevented his mastering them. What he learned one day was gone two days after. His foundation crumbled away beneath the structure he was striving to build upon it.

Like a good doctor studying a troublesome case, Salter, having located the weakness, set to work to remove it. Without special arrangement, almost without previous appointment, the sessions before the German and Latin recitations became regular. As we have learned, Salter’s room was not a place where boys were likely to gather. The friends who used to lounge in at Strong’s to pass an agreeable half hour now found the door frequently locked and their bird flown. It was weeks before they knew that he was “living at Salter’s.” They did not know, could not know, how much Salter was doing for their unscholarly friend; how he kept poor Strong reviewing, reviewing, reviewing, until certain forms and facts were stamped into his brain in ineradicable lines; how faithfully the list of frequently missed words was kept; how Strong himself at last grew so much interested in the constant struggle to master the elusive, mocking, fugitive vocabulary, that with every new word struck from the black-list he felt a triumph as of a well-won race.

Out of doors also the two began to appear together. When Strong did his work on the track, Salter was likely to be there also, to hold the sprinter’s sweater, or give him practice starts, or try to catch his time with the stop-watch. Collins, the trainer, came at last to expect them to appear together, and having found that Salter was developing skill in timing, not infrequently asked the “second” for other services. To his own surprise, Salter became aware that his society and his stop-watch were both in growing demand.

And so two months slipped by, and the day of the school meet came. Strong could not run, for he was still under the ban of probation. He watched the sports at Salter’s side, and felt the tingle of eagerness for the fray as he saw other fellows take the races which he might have won; and his heart throbbed with an overmastering yearning like that of the hunting-dog held back by a cruel leash when the pack is starting. The more fervently did he hammer away that night at his treacherous old enemies—the Latin constructions and the German vocabulary—while the boys discussed the games, on the dormitory steps.

A few days later the news flashed about the school that Strong had “passed off” his conditions. Wolcott and Poole knew how he had done it; others who had noticed his steady improvement in recitations were not so much amazed. But after all, the feeling uppermost seemed to be that his chances for the Hillbury meet were not what they had once been. At the Hillbury school contests the week before, Howes had done the hundred in ten and two-fifths, while Joslin had won the two-twenty in phenomenally fast time. So of these two races, which in the earlier estimates of the year had been credited to Strong, Seaton could hardly expect to win more than one. The school was discouraged, and so was Strong; but in answer to all the chatter of question and doubt, Salter and the trainer smiled wisely and imitated Brer Rabbit in saying nothing. They had held the watch on their man too many times to fear a newspaper hero.

The Seaton-Hillbury games that year were among the closest ever held by the rival schools. Strong won the hundred yards early in the contest, proving to the doubters that he really could run in ten and a fifth. Joslin of Hillbury won the quarter mile. And then, as the hurdles and distances were run and the field events yielded their slow results, the figures posted on the great announcement board showed as leader now Hillbury, now Seaton, with every patriotic lad guessing from event to event in a delightful thrill of hope and apprehension. When the two-twenty, the last race of the day, was reached, the score stood Hillbury 40½, Seaton 39½, the schools having tied for third place in one event.