Dick shook his head. "No, I don't," he answered humbly. "I told you I was green. We don't know much about athletics out our way. Unless plowing, and getting in hay, and chopping wood count for anything. If they do, we might have a show."
Allen laughed again. "Well, they ought to, all right," he answered. "What a bully idea for a Pentathlon! I'm going to speak to Mr. Fenton about it. People couldn't say athletics were a waste of time then. Well, to come back to him. He was a hummer when he was in college. He was awfully popular, and he stood away up in his class, and they say, in athletics, there wasn't anything he couldn't do. They wanted him for the crew, and they wanted him on the nine, but he wouldn't do either. I guess he didn't have any too much money then, and he told them, straight out, that he'd come to college to work, and not for athletics. He wasn't a crank, though; he took his exercise every day, only he didn't waste any time over it. And finally the trainer of the track team spotted him and got him to come out for the jumps. Golly, but he surprised them. He never seemed to take such a lot of pains about it, but I guess he was what they call a natural jumper. Anyway, before he got through, he did six feet in the high, and twenty-three two and a half in the broad. Perhaps that didn't hold them for a while. So you can see he's a good man to be master of a school. He's been through the thing himself, and he's got this whole athletic business down fine.
"I remember the talk he had with me when I first came to the school; it made me take a shine to him right away. He doesn't lecture you, you know, as if you were a kid; he talks to you just as if you were grown up, and knew as much as he did; maybe more. Well, first of all, he told me he didn't think any school could succeed where the master and the boys weren't in harmony; and then he went ahead and gave me his ideas on athletics. He said he liked them, and approved of them, and meant to do all he could to encourage them--but that he was going to keep them in their place. He said athletics were to help out lessons, and not to hinder them; and that there wasn't any need of any conflict between the two. But if there was a conflict, he said--if a fellow got so crazy over athletics that he couldn't study--then the athletics would have to go. And if that made the fellow feel so bad that even then he couldn't study--or wouldn't study--why, then it would be the fellow himself that would have to go. But he meant that more for a joke, I guess; nothing like that's ever happened since he started the school. It's a pretty pig-headed fellow that can't get along with Mr. Fenton. He's got a great way with him, somehow or other; I don't know just how he does it, but he gets lots of fellows interested in studying that you'd think were too lazy even to want to learn the alphabet straight. Oh, I tell you, Randall, he's all right."
Dick nodded. "I'll bet he is," he answered with enthusiasm. He was beginning to feel the genuine esprit de corps; was realizing, for the first time, that a school might be something more than a place where one came merely to "do" one's lessons, and to learn enough to enter college in safety. "Yes," he went on, "that sounds mighty sensible to me. And as you say, Allen, where a man's been an athlete himself, and a scholar, too, why, you can't help feeling a respect for what he thinks about things. I can understand, though, about fellows getting too much interested in athletics. I can see right now where I've got to look out for that, myself. You've seen such a lot of it here that you don't realize how it takes hold of a fellow that's never had any show to go into them. I feel as if I'd like to try everything in sight, if I didn't remember that my father's had to work good and hard to send me here. And he wouldn't care much for cups and medals, I guess. 'Book-learning,' that's what he wants to see me get. Still, I suppose there's time for studying and athletics, too, if a fellow goes at it right."
Allen nodded. "Oh, sure there is," he answered. "And don't get the idea, from what I said, that Mr. Fenton's a crank about it, or that he's the preachy kind, because he isn't. He's keen on physical culture, you know. A fellow's got to take his exercise every day, whether he's a star athlete like Dave, or the worst grind that ever wanted to swallow a Greek dictionary, roots and all. Oh, Mr. Fenton likes exercise, only, as he says, there's a happy medium everywhere--in athletics, just as in everything else. He doesn't want the fellows to underdo; and he doesn't want them to overdo; and he keeps an eye on every boy in the school. He takes just as much pride in having the fellows in good shape physically as he does in having them go into college with honors; and I tell you we don't have much sickness around here. So you needn't worry about exercise; there's no reason why you can't try anything you want. And I should think, to look at you, Randall, you'd make a crack-a-jack at something. How much do you weigh? A hundred and sixty?"
His companion's build, indeed, fully justified his admiration. Randall was strong and sturdy, from much hard work in the open, absolutely healthy, and as rugged and active as a young colt. It was small wonder that Allen, himself a member of the track team, looked him over with an appreciative eye.
Dick flushed with pleasure. "I weigh a little more than that," he answered. "About a hundred and sixty-eight, I guess. That's nothing, though. Think of Ellis."
"Oh, well," returned Allen, "weight isn't everything." Then added, with a smile, "You wouldn't think, to look at me, Randall, that I had any pretensions to being an athlete, now would you? As the song says, 'I'm as thin as the paper on the wall.' I hardly disturb the scales when I weigh myself."
Dick looked at him. "Why, I don't know," he answered frankly, and half-doubtfully, "but I should think, somehow, you look as though you could run pretty well."
Allen laughed. "Good guesser," he rejoined. "You've hit it, first crack. I don't mean, of course, that I'm any good, but running's the only thing I can do anywhere near well. It took a lot of hard work, too. I was certainly a lemon when I started in. But last year I won the quarter in the school games, and I got third in the big meet. So I won my 'F', and that makes a fellow feel good, you know. Shows he's done something for the school."