He had feared he might have some trouble in explaining his absence from the supper-table at home, but that proved unexpectedly easy. The second evening after he began to play on the scrub, he found Father in the library at home, reading the sporting sheet of the Evening Telegram.
"Any other Crittendens in college, Neale?" he asked.
"Not that I know about."
"That's you on the football team, then?"
"Only on the scrub, yes, I'm trying. We have dinner together after practice. You don't mind, do you?"
"Me? Of course not," said Father.
Mother heard all this, apparently had known it before, and did not ask him to take care of himself and not get hurt. Neale looked over at her gratefully. Mother was all right.
The football season slid along, the Varsity improving every week. Neale glowed with caste-loyalty as Saturday after Saturday he watched the prowess of his big brothers. Every day he felt himself stretching up, broadening out, nearer to their stature, though nobody else gave him a thought. Life was full of big and generous and absorbing matter.
Then came Thanksgiving Day, the climax ... and oh, after that, what a vacuum! Nothing in life but classes! Holy smoke! It was fierce! What did the fellows do who hadn't had anything but classes! How could they stand it? But of course, it wasn't such a come-down for them.
Going home as Neale did every afternoon, he had none of the scanty, ill-organized college social life. Sliding into college as he had, with no introduction from the right kind of Prep. school, and with a noticeably colorless personality, he was not thought of as a possibility for any fraternity. Time hung heavy on his hands. Lectures took up but three hours a day, on the busiest days. To fill in the rest of the time there was the swimming pool, the Gymnasium and the Library. He swam, practised the overhand racing stroke, dived; in the Gym. he fooled awkwardly on the parallel bars and side-horse; he tossed medicine balls with any pick-up acquaintance; what he really enjoyed was the line of traveling rings which hung in front of the visitors' gallery—but one day he heard an upper classman refer to these as "Freshmen's Delight," and thereafter he avoided them.