Now in spite of the improvement in Princeton's play, the score had not changed, though Princeton had the ball on Harvard's ten-yard line when two minutes later the first half ended.
In the second half of the game there was more excitement than in the first. Roth, who had been the hero of the afternoon in Harvard eyes, was carried off, and two or three Princeton men were disabled. Harvard, contrary to what had been expected was apparently playing the fiercer game. The yell of the Harvard sympathizers grew louder and louder.
In two downs Princeton had gained four yards. Then when the ball was passed to Dinsmore the noted Princeton half-back, Douglass, the popular Harvard quarter-back tore through the centre, and downed Dinsmore with the loss of five yards, making it Harvard's ball on Princeton's twenty-two yard line.
The wildest hurrahing—a perfect pandemonium—now arose from the Harvard bleachers. For the crimson was within striking distance of a touch-down, and the orange had begun to droop. The girls in Edith's party, even those not wholly familiar with the game in its finer points, were thoroughly worked up. Some of the rough play worried Edith, and she buried her face in her hands with a shudder when Jefferson, the Harvard centre was carried from the field apparently senseless.
"Don't be a goose, Edith," whispered Nora, "you know that it can't be anything very dreadful, or they wouldn't go on playing."
"Oh, yes, they would," murmured Edith. "They'd do anything in a football game, they haven't a bit of feeling." But she lifted her head, and was repaid by seeing Hutton kick a goal from the field thus sending the score up to fifteen. This especially pleased her, because Hutton's little sister, who had a high opinion of her brother's prowess, was a great pet of hers.
"Don't you feel much as the Roman women used to feel at the Coliseum games?" Julia contrived to say to Ruth in one of the intervals of play.
"It's almost as savage a sport as some of those gladiator affairs," replied Ruth, "but I don't believe that the gladiators were more uncivilized-looking than these players. Did you ever see such hair?"
The next moment the girls were all attention. For although the Harvard score never went beyond that fifteen, the game was an absorbing one for the followers of both colors.
Princeton's battering-ram proved effective more than once, and every one could see that in the matter of strength her men were ahead of the Harvard team. But in activity Harvard was undeniably the superior, and at last when the game was called, the score still stood 16 to 0 in favor of the crimson.