If Jacquette had heard herself called a princess among women she could not have felt more pleased—and her face showed it.
“Of course you know,” Bobs continued, “that our team has won every game it has played against any other school this fall?”
“I think I do!” she flashed, saucily.
“And you know that the next game is the last of the season—the one that decides the championship for the year.” Bobs cleared his throat, and Jacquette waited.
“Well, of course you know that, according to the rules at Marston, if a football man’s average for the week falls below on the day before the game, he’s debarred from playing. You knew that, didn’t you?”
“Yes.”
She wondered what was coming.
“The point is this: I’ve had a hard pull to keep above in my studies and keep the team in shape, too, and I haven’t always done it, either. You probably know that I missed playing in two games this season, because I was below, those two weeks. But, such marks as I have had, I’ve earned myself. I haven’t had credit for a stroke of work that was done by anyone else.”
“Of course not!”
He looked at her curiously. “It’s a common thing, you know, for the fellows on the team to have someone else do their studying during the season,” he explained, defensively. “But I’ve stood against it, and they all know it. That’s the reason I’m in such an awkward box, now. The fact is, I’m below in my English this week, and, besides all the rest of the work, there are two themes lacking, and, to make it as bad as it could be, one of those themes is a sonnet!”