The boys of Lowell University had never been very successful in football against their old rivals at Jefferson, and the fellows were so chock-full of enthusiasm over it that they had not yet had enough opportunity to satisfy it. As each of the members of the team had arrived he had been welcomed in much the same way, but the great welcome was, of course, given to “[good old Hughie]” as they called him, and now that he was with them again it was possible, taking the boys’ view of it, for the work of the University to go on.
[“Good old Hughie Jenkins was back.”]
As Captain Larke had said, “Hughie is entitled to all the credit we can give him. He has been a wonder at baseball because he has always kept the boys fighting hard to win, no matter what the score was, and we have won many a game just because we wanted to do our best for him, and the way he made us get out and win in the last few minutes of the big football game kind of shows that he knows how to put them over.”
“That’s right,” said Kirkpatrick, who was right end on the team, “if good old Hughie hadn’t put some of the fight back in us when that old score was 0 to 0 in the last five minutes of play, and then himself kicked that field goal from Jefferson’s twenty-five-yard line, we wouldn’t have won.”
“Well,” said Hughie, “this is fine all right, boys. We did win, didn’t we! and it’s very kind of you to try to give me all the credit, but if it hadn’t been for the other ten fellows on the team, I guess I couldn’t have done very much, and anyway it took eleven pretty good men to beat that team from Jefferson.”
Then, turning to Johnny Everson he said, “Gee, I wish the snow would melt. I’d like to find out what kind of new fellows we have who can play baseball.”
And that was just like Hughie. Here it was winter, with snow on the ground, and a month or two of cold weather still in sight. He had hardly got rested from the football campaign, and now he was wishing it was time to get out the bats, balls, and masks!
“It gets me,” said Delvin to Gibbie over in one corner, “how that old boy hustles and is thinking about all kinds of things all the time, but I guess that’s the way to win out.”