“Oh, never mind,” said Paul, turning away. “He’ll be down to supper in a few minutes, and I can see him then.”
But Leon failed to appear at supper-time, and when Harry and Paul went to look him up afterwards, they found him lying on his bed, looking a little white about the mouth.
“What’s the matter, Leon?” exclaimed Harry anxiously.
“Oh, nothing much,” answered Leon, sitting up as he saw them enter; “only I twisted my foot a little in that last rush. It felt sort of queer, and I thought I’d keep still to-night; but ’t will be all right in the morning, so don’t say anything about it.”
However, morning found the ankle so swollen and lame that Leon allowed his brother to ask Lieutenant Wilde to come and look at it. Slight as was his knowledge of such matters, Lieutenant Wilde unhesitatingly pronounced it a severe sprain, and the village doctor, who appeared a little later, confirmed him in the statement and ordered the boy to give his foot a rest for some days.
“When you boys get a little sense of your own,” the old man remarked vehemently, while he bound up the foot with fingers as gentle as a woman’s; “when you boys get a little sense of your own, I say, you’ll leave off playing such an abominable game as football. It’s come now to where it isn’t much but a prize-fight, and all it’s good for is to bring in an income to us doctors. There! now you’re all right, but don’t you think of stepping on that foot for the next week. Then we’ll see!” And he took his departure, leaving his patient looking rather forlorn.
“This is fine,” remarked Leon disconsolately, when he had gone. “Here ’tis Thanksgiving week, and everybody going off. Between this and my row with Winslow, I am rather down on my luck, just now.”
“Never mind, Leon,” said Alex, who chanced to be in the room. “Everybody says the doctor only punished you because he had to, for the looks of it; and you can console yourself with the thought that the seniors are all saying that you did more than any other one fellow to save the game for them.”
“Yes,” added Harry; “and you’d better be thankful that you didn’t lay yourself up in practice. Plenty of fellows have done it before now, and there’s neither glory nor fun in that kind of thing, you know.”
“Much good that does me,” returned Leon ungratefully, though at heart he was proud of his success. “I only hope daddy won’t think I’m a hard case. But when you fellows are off eating turkey, think of me, starving here on husks, with only Dame Pinney for company.”