"Yep," said the Sailor.
There followed a final consultation between the chairman of the club and his fellow committee-men. But only one conclusion to the matter was possible. The Blackhampton Rovers must either accept Mr. W. H. Jukes with all his limitations, or lose the type of goalkeeper they had been seeking up and down the land for many a year.
XIII
To the Sailor, the visit to Blackhampton was a fairy tale. At first, he could not realize that he had worn the chocolate and blue, and had performed wonderful deeds at the instance of a power beyond himself. As for the sequel, involving a farewell to the wharf of Antcliff and Jackson, Limited, and a triumphal return to his natal city as a salaried player of the Rovers, even when this had really happened, it was very hard to believe.
Ginger took the credit. And if he had not had a talent for affairs these things could not have come about. It was entirely due to him that Henry Harper learned to play football, and had he not mastered the art, it is unlikely that he would ever have found the key to his life.
The Sailor was a simple, modest soul. He felt the sudden turn of fortune's wheel was due to no grace of his own. From that amazing hour when certain documents were signed and Henry Harper, who had suffered terrible things to gain a few dollars a month, began to draw a salary of two pounds a week with surprisingly little to do in order to earn it, his devotion to Ginger became almost that of a dog for its master.
They both had their feet on the ladder now, if ever two young men had. It might be luck, it might be pluck, it might be a combination of anything you chose to call it, but there it was; two untried men had imposed their personalities upon some of the shrewdest judges of football in the United Kingdom. The Sailor had shown genius on the field; Ginger had shown genius of a kind more valuable.
On the Monday week following their triumph, they invaded Blackhampton again. This time they were accompanied not merely by their Gladstone bags and their velvet-collared overcoats, but they came with the whole of their worldly goods.
They obtained—-"they" meaning Ginger—some quite first-rate lodgings in Newcastle Street, near the canal. These had been recommended by Dinkie Dawson, who lodged in the next street but two. The charges of the new landlady, Miss Gwladys Foldal, were much higher than those of Mrs. Sparks, but the accommodation was Class compared to Paradise Alley. As Ginger informed the Sailor, socially they had taken a big step up.