“Talbot went against you and bulldozed ’em into electing Horr. You know he’s always got to have his way.”
Roger smiled bravely. “He probably thought Horr would make a better captain.”
“I don’t know what he thought. I know what he did. He pretends to be a friend of yours, too.”
“He is a friend,” said Roger, quickly.
“The way he treated you didn’t look much like it. Good night.”
Dunn returned to his room fairly well satisfied with himself; he had given Hardie something to think of that would take down his insufferable conceit, a conceit which Dunn was convinced must be the worse since it was masked by such a quiet exterior.
In fact, if thinking was all Roger was expected to do, Dunn’s mission of malice was wholly successful. Roger did think, lying awake an hour after he went to bed, and fighting vainly against an insistent mental activity that would not be cajoled by firm resolutions or new arrangements of pillow; but the direction which his thoughts took was different from what Jason had anticipated. A week before, he would have ridiculed the idea of his being made captain; his ambition did not fly so high. Now, when the opportunity had come and gone, when the honor which, it seemed, had been almost within his reach, was bestowed upon another, he understood how much he should have prized it. Why had Talbot interfered against him? Surely not from ill-will, for the record of the season proved him as stanch a friend as an insignificant new boy ever acquired; nor from personal liking for Horr—they belonged to wholly different sets in school. It must be, then, that Pete regarded him as incompetent for the position. Moreover, if Pete thought so, it was probably true; he was just a meek, harmless, flabby sort of fellow who happened to be able to play a fair game at end, but wasn’t fit for leadership! Dunn’s shot had wounded, but not in the spot at which it was aimed. Hardie’s self-esteem was hurt, not his trust in Pete.
The next morning he turned over the subject again as he dressed. “Pete was right to think as he did, and yet he was wrong,” he said to himself. “I should have made just as good a captain as Horr. The trouble with me is that I’m always waiting for some one to recognize me and push me forward. I haven’t confidence enough in myself; there’s where I’ve got to change. I can do things when I have to. Why do I always act as if I couldn’t?”
He rode into town that morning with Mike. Mike’s society was usually a pleasure. His mind was always brimful of the present. He knew exactly what he thought on all the matters that entered into his experience, and exactly what he wanted to do. Mike never hesitated through bashfulness, nor wasted opportunities because of lack of faith to accept them!
“You ought to have been football captain,” declared Mike, as they stood on the back platform of a crowded in-bound car. “You’d make a lot better one than Horr. Horr really doesn’t know the game. I told Pete Talbot so, too. They needn’t think that because you’re quiet, you haven’t any push in you. I know better!”