"But you must realize, Rus," I argues, "that your attitude on this matter is very exceptional. You can't expect all football players to pay the attention you've been paying to developing themselves to a fine point on picking up loose balls!"
"Razzberries!" retorts "Rus," "Then they're not worthy of the name of football players!"
And there the arbitration rests. But the season doesn't get much older than "Rus's" mania begins to break out in a new channel. He's so anxious to see all the boys proficient in the gentle art of falling on the ball that he takes to ragging them every time they miss out.
"Butter fingers!" he yells, and gets a glare in return for his trouble.
"Butter fingers, yourself!" cries the guy who's just looked foolish.
And the first thing you know, the name that "Rus" has branded his team-mates with, comes back on him like a boomerang. So, the only fellow who doesn't deserve the title of "Butter Fingers" is the one who gets it!
"That's all right," "Rus" says to me. "Let 'em call me 'Butter Fingers.' I'll make 'em eat that word twenty times a day. And they'll be trying extra hard to keep from being 'Butter Fingers.' You see!"
Which makes it sound like "Rus" has decided to act the martyr to some adopted cause! Now right here's where a complication enters my story in the shape of Mr. Maxwell Tincup, dignified member of the school board and a political power in the town. Among other things Mr. Tincup is bitterly opposed to football as a sport that's "absolutely barbarious." Football, in Mr. Tincup's exalted opinion, is a machine which manufactures a lot of good-for-nothing rowdies. He's made the air blue at many board meetings, voicing his protest against continuance of the sport as an athletic activity at Burden High but he's never quite been able to get a majority vote against it. Just the same his attitude has stirred up considerable feeling and hasn't exactly made him popular with the boys.
"What Tincup needs is a dose of second childhood," "Butter Fingers" prescribes one day. "He evidently didn't have any the first time!"
Mr. Tincup's home is right on our way to school, a big old-fashioned house that stands on a corner of the street, surrounded by a high picket fence. We often see the anti-footballist's three year old son hanging to the fence and peeking out as though he'd like to investigate the outer world.