Parker scowled at his friend.
“I don’t know that I have to explain everything I do to you,” he said savagely. “I changed my mind about taking the captaincy. I’m not sure that I want to play, anyhow. The way things are here, with this Merriwell as universal coach, there’s no special honor about being captain of a Yale team any more.”
Paul Foote, an undersized, ill-favored youth, who was smoking cigarettes at a great rate, lighting one as fast as he finished the one before it, whistled.
“So it’s Merriwell, is it?” he said, with an unpleasant smile, that didn’t make him look at all good-natured. “Funny how he bluffs all you big men out! First Taylor and Gray—now you. And even old Steve Carter. Steve used to be a good fellow. He trained with our crowd, and he was all primed to run for the baseball captaincy. Now he stays home nights and does his lessons, and he acts as if he thought Dick Merriwell was a little tin god on wheels. I thought better of you, though, Wes; honest, I did.”
Parker got up and wandered morosely about the room.
“If you think I’m scared of this fellow, Foote,” he said, “you’re jolly well mistaken. I’m going to take him out some time and give him the worst licking he ever had. But he’s got the whole college with him. What’s the use of fighting him? No matter what I said, he’d have most of the fellows with him, and I’d be powerless against that sort of thing. You know that as well as I do.”
“That’s the trouble with you big, beefy fellows,” said Foote disgustedly. “You haven’t any brains. That’s the reason I haven’t any use for you athletes—or most of you. I wouldn’t go across the street to get a ‘Y’ myself. But my dad thinks it’s a great thing. He rowed on the crew here twenty-five years ago, and he’s promised me a trip to Europe after I graduate and an increase of a thousand in my allowance if I get my ‘Y’ next fall. That’s the only reason I’ve gone in for football.”
“Well,” said Parker, with a little satisfaction in being able to insult this weakling, “you’ve got about as much chance of getting a ‘Y’ here as I have of being president of the Y. M. C. A. So you can make up your mind to go without that extra money and go to work as soon as you graduate.”
“That’s why I want you to do Merriwell up,” said Foote cheerfully. “It can be done, you know. Make him look ridiculous. Get the whole college laughing at him. Hit at him through his pets. Then you’ll draw his teeth. And you can’t lick him in a fight, anyhow. He’s too good for you—unless you wear knuckle dusters or something like that. Strategy—that’s what you need to beat him. And you couldn’t think up a scheme in a thousand years.”
Parker was furious. But he had an idea that Foote was right. He had tried his hand in a battle of wits with the universal coach, and had been pretty badly beaten. Therefore, he was not anxious to repeat the experiment unless he was sure of success.