“Same offers?” asked Wolcott.
“Better ones. I can have the earth. They promise to find me a place to work where all I have to do is to draw my pay, and they’ll see to it that my expenses don’t worry me. It amounts to an offer to get me into college, keep me there, and find me a job when I get out. All I have to do is to play football.”
“Going?” asked Wolcott, laughing.
“Going!” repeated Laughlin, as he snapped himself up into a sitting position on the sofa and stared reproachfully at his questioner. “Not if I know myself! There isn’t money enough in the whole institution to buy me. And what’s more, I’m not going to a place where they do business in that way. I’d rather not go to college at all than hire myself out to play football.”
Wolcott gazed at his big friend in silence, but the admiration which his lips failed to express was revealed by the gleam of feeling in his eyes. Laughlin had toiled away the vacation weeks as porter in a summer hotel. His school life was but a routine of close study and hard manual labor, of plugging at lessons and furnace tending and snow shovelling and odd jobbing. The time given to football involved a personal sacrifice to be made good by greater effort after the season closed. The future had nothing in store for him except what his own hands and brain could provide. What a temptation, then, this promise of an easy and glorious college course!
“There seems to be a wrong notion of me going round,” continued Laughlin. “I don’t see why they should keep after me so. Even if I were willing to sell myself, I doubt if I could deliver the goods. I’m really only a fair sort of player. They seem to think I belong on an all-American eleven.”
“You’ll make it some day if you keep on,” declared the admirer, his ardor of feeling finding expression in emphasis rather than in words.
“Whether I do or not makes mighty little difference to me at present. All I ask is to win the Hillbury game.”
“Oh, you’ll do that fast enough. Just look at the old men you’ve got back.”
“I’ve looked at ’em,” the captain answered sagely. “Some of ’em will be better than they were last year and some worse, and all harder to control. It looks like just the kind of a veteran team that gets done up. You’re coming out to-morrow, aren’t you?”