But there was also another result. Since the truth can sometimes bite through the thickest hide, Larry Donovan was soon to find that he had made an implacable enemy in Old Sheddon. But of that, however, he remained happily ignorant for the time being.
X
AT THE SIGN OF THE SAMOVAR
As the season advanced, Larry found that he had his hands full, and then some. Havercamp was unwilling to let him off from his Micrometer assignment, and what with that and his studies, and boosting Dick to make up the lost standing, and going out with the team every time Coach Brock gave it a work-out, there was little chance for him to get rusty for the want of something to do.
It was along in these early spring days that Dick had to pay for his foolishness—not to call it by any harder name. True, Uncle Billy Starbuck, his father’s partner in the “Little Alice” mine, and his uncle only because his father and Uncle Billy had married sisters, sent him a birthday check along in April that enabled him to square things with his frat brothers who were carrying him along financially, but no check, however generous, could buy him off on the score of the neglected studies.
So, at a time when every fellow in Old Sheddon who had a drop of good red blood in him was turning out for some kind of outdoor activity, and soft skies and budding trees and greening meadows were calling so that you could almost hear them in your sleep, Dick was boning away for dear life, scared stiff more than half of the time for fear he wouldn’t be able to make his final passing grades, and learning, incidentally, we may suppose, the hard lesson that we all have to learn sooner or later, that he who plays must pay.
“Gosh!” he lamented, one night after Larry had been putting him through a regular course of sprouts on some of the back work in Math., “I’d been meaning to try out for one of the track teams this spring, and now look at me—handcuffed to a pencil and a pad, and with my nose glued into a book! Makes me think of old Johnnie Mawker oiling the train trucks in the Brewster station. Recollect how he used to grin and show his bad teeth when he’d jerk open a housing and prod in it with his hook, and say: ‘Shore enough, b’ys, the way of the train’s greaser is hard’? How’s the practice coming along? I haven’t so much as looked over the fence of the field this year.”
“We’re doing fairly well. If there’s anything in hard work, Brock means to put a good team into the fight next fall. Wally Dixon’s coming out fine. I’m mighty glad Brock picked him. He’s got all-star stuff in him if he can take on a little more swiftness.”
“Wally’s all sorts of a good fellow,” said Dick, half musingly. “We call him ‘The Butcher’ in the house—I suppose because his Dad’s in the packing business, but that, or his Dad’s money, doesn’t hurt him any.”