“Larry, you old sorehead—you don’t know how much good it does me to hear you s-say that!” he stammered. And then, in a steadier voice: “You’re all wrong about the fellows not liking you: they’ll like you just as much as you’ll let them. There isn’t a worth-while fellow in Old Sheddon that cares a hoot whether you’re rich or poor. If you’d only loosen up——”
Larry did “loosen up” the next day when he was on the field with his team; and it was Oliver McKnight, son of any number of millions of Consolidated Steel, who applied the loosening twist. In an intermission, McKnight came and flung himself down beside Larry.
“Say, Donovan,” he began abruptly, “you ought to push my face in. Four or five weeks ago I said some things about you to Cal Rogers that gave you a good right to hate me straight through the four years. Of course, I didn’t know you were overhearing me; but that only makes it worse—looks as if I didn’t have the nerve to say such things to your face. I was a mucker; and ever since, I’ve been trying to dig up sand enough to come and tell you so.”
There was more than a drop of good, warm, Irish blood in Larry Donovan’s veins, as his name would indicate, and for an impulsive half-second he wanted to throw his arms around the pampered son of Consolidated Steel. He didn’t quite do that, but he did say what was fitting.
“That’s all right, Mac—perfectly all right. You just forget it. I won’t say that it didn’t rub me the wrong way at the time, but——”
“Thanks, old scout,” McKnight broke in. “I’ve had that on my chest until I’m sore as a boil. What chance do you think we’re going to stand to lift the hoodoo to-morrow?”
The morrow was the day set for the “Blacksmiths” to play Rockford Poly on the home field. Rockford was not in the Conference, but it had a strong eleven, and even the best friends of the Sheddon team were saying that they hadn’t a chance in the world. But at McKnight’s question Larry scraped around and found a bit of the newly boosted college loyalty.
“We’ll never say die till we’re dead,” he asserted. “We’ve got to get in with both feet and put a barrel of pep behind our fellows to-morrow. We simply can’t let them lose!”
“Gorry! it sure sounds good to hear you talk that way. But we’re lame, Donnie. Since Critchett and Johnson were laid out in that game with the down-State eleven, we’ve been sewed up. Brock’s put in all of his subs, first and last, and they’ve fizzled on him, one after another. Shebbie’s been keeping in wire touch with the team, and he says we’ll have to have new material here to-morrow for Brock to draw from.”
It was here that Larry showed that he could be generous.