“But I didn’t act at all,” he said quickly. “I just learned the lines and left the rest to luck. All I did was to try and imagine what I would feel like and what I’d do if I were in Lance Jarvis’ place.”
The young actor laughed.
“That’s what we all try to do,” he returned; “but we don’t always succeed. It’s a shame, though, that I should get all the credit of this! It doesn’t seem a bit fair. People ought to know that I wasn’t the fellow who played last night. I tell you it makes me feel pretty mean to take another man’s laurels.”
“But that’s the only reason why I did it,” Dick objected. “It was to save you.”
“And you succeeded,” the other put in quickly. “I builded better than I knew when I sent you that wire. Now tell me all about it. How did everything go off? Did any one suspect? How did Marion take things?”
Two months later, when “Jarvis of Yale” was at the height of its metropolitan success, Dick Merriwell received the following note:
“Dear Old Boy: Perhaps you won’t be awfully surprised when I tell you that Marion and I have agreed to travel henceforth through this weary world in double harness. She knows the secret of my first performance in New Haven, and when I told her that you took my place she was perfectly horrified. She won’t tell me anything, but I gather that something happened that night which wasn’t on the program. She did say she’d never be able to look you in the face again. If I didn’t know you so well, I should be writhing in the grip of the green-eyed monster. As it is, I’m only curious. Perhaps you’ll put me wise next time you see me. Yours ever, Austin.”
But Dick never did, and was soon back deep in the athletic sports of the college.