“I’ve been thinking the thing all over,” he began, “and I see perfectly plainly what’s the right thing to do. I’ve gone to the bad in my play. I know it as well as anybody. I want you to put little Mac into my place at quarter and give him a good, fair show to prove what he can do. He’s no good in the line because he’s so light, but he tackles like a little fiend in the open, and he can catch anything that can be kicked. I could tell him all he doesn’t know about signals and plays in twenty minutes. I believe the change would give the team a new start.”
“By Jove, you’re the stuff, Jack!” cried Talbot, as he clutched his friend’s hand and gave it a wring. “If we win anything this year, that’s the spirit that’ll bring it. There’s something in a name, after all.”
“Give McDowell the place and wrest it back from him,” suggested Mr. Adams, who felt the tension of the scene.
“I shan’t wrest it back, if he has a fair show, sir,” answered Sumner, with a melancholy laugh.
“We’ll try him, then,” concluded Harrison; “shan’t we, Yards?”
Yards acquiesced with a vast sense of relief. He had already determined on this very change, though how he was to bring it about had greatly perplexed him. Sumner’s magnanimity relieved him of all anxiety.
CHAPTER VIII
A SLIGHTED OFFER
Only a week remained before the first league game—that with Newbury. Having already had experience in the position, and being a lad who used his eyes and ears more than his lips, Hardie needed very little coaching to fit well into the game at left end. Though he lacked Harrison’s sureness in play, as well as the instinctive readiness in translating signals into action which is to be expected of one who has practiced long in a single position, he was better than Harrison in making holes and quite as fast in getting down the field. Each showed a fine keenness of scent after the ball in the enemy’s hands; each was master of the art which belongs especially to a good end, of appearing where he is most useful, and not somewhere else. Deprived of the support of the first team and handicapped by the weakness of the second, Dunn made an inconspicuous figure in the practice. When on the first, he had at times, under favorable conditions, shown effective dash and vigor; degraded to the second, he became sulky and listless. Little remained of the aggressiveness of the early days but a chronic ugliness which manifested itself in fault-finding and in the practice of certain mean tricks which he had learned at a former school.
Sumner’s conduct stood out in strong contrast. Having undertaken to furnish the school a quarter-back better than himself, he pushed his sacrifice to its full limit. He drilled Mac in signals, schooled him in receiving and passing—a part of the play in which Sumner himself excelled—and put him in possession, as far as was possible, of such facts respecting likely plays and dangers to be avoided as his own experience had furnished. Harrison immediately made him captain of the second eleven, and in this capacity he went energetically to work to build up a team which should give the first the best possible practice. By this course, it is safe to say, he gained more respect among the boys whose opinion was worth having than if he had kept his place and won a game. When kid-brother Dick, who, imp-like, found amusement in his elder’s misfortune, referred slightingly to Jack as having been “fired,” Mike McKay threatened to lick him on the spot.