His last B—The words struck the blithesome Hicks with sledge-hammer
force. Big Butch Brewster was talking of his last B, when he, T. Haviland
Hicks, Jr., had never won his first; with a feeling almost of alarm, the
sunny youth realized that this was his final year at old Bannister, his
last chance to win his athletic letter, and to make happy his beloved Dad,
by helping him to realize part of his life's ambition—to behold his son
shattering Hicks, Sr.'s, wonderful record. His final chance, and outside of
his hopes of winning the track award in the high-jump, Hicks saw no way to
win his B.
Thomas Haviland Hicks, Sr., as has been chronicled, the beloved Dad of the
cheery Senior, a Pittsburgh millionaire Steel King, was a graduate of old
Bannister, Class of '92. While wearing the Gold and Green, he had made
an all-round athletic record never before, or afterward, rivaled on
the campus. At football, basketball, track, and baseball, he was a
scintillating star, annexing enough letters to start an alphabet, had they
been different ones. Quite naturally, when the Doctor, speaking anent
the then infantile Thomas Haviland Hicks, Jr., said, "Mr. Hicks, it's a
boy!"—the one-time Bannister athlete straightway began to dream of the day
when his only son and heir should follow in his Dad's footsteps, shattering
the records made at Bannister, and at Yale, by Hicks, père.
However, to quote a sporting phrase, the son of the Steel King "upset the
dope!" At the start of his Senior year, T. Haviland Hicks, Jr. had not
annexed a single athletic honor, nor did the signs point to any records
being in peril of getting shattered by his prowess; as Hicks himself
phrased it, "Dame Nature was some stingy when she handed out the Hercules
stuff to me!" The happy-go-lucky youth, when he matriculated as a Freshman
at Bannister College, was builded on the general lines of a toothpick, and
had he elected to follow a pugilistic career, a division somewhat lighter
than the tissue paperweight class would have had to be devised to
accommodate the splinter-student. A generous, sunny-souled, intensely
democratic collegian, despite his father's wealth, the festive Hicks, with
his room always open-house to all; his firm friendship for star athlete
or humble boner, his never-failing sunny nature, together with his famous
Hicks Personally Conducted Expeditions downtown to the Beef-Steak Busts he
had originated, in his three years at old Bannister, had made himself the
most popular and beloved youth on the campus, but, he had not won his B!
And he had tried. With a full realization, of his Dad's ambition, his
life-dream to behold his son a great athlete, the blithesome Hicks had
tried, but with hilariously futile results. Nature had endowed him, as he
told his loyal comrade, Butch Brewster, with "the Herculean build of a
Jersey mosquito," and his athletic powers neared zero infinity. In his
Freshman year, he inaugurated his athletic career by running the wrong way
in the Sophomore-Freshman football game, scoring a touchdown that won for
the enemy, and naturally, after that performance, every athletic effort was
greeted with jeers by the students.
"I have tried!" said Hicks, producing two letters from the study-table,
"But not like I should have tried. I could never have played on the eleven,
or on the nine, but I have a chance in the high-jump. I know I've been
indolent and care-free, and I ought to have trained harder. Well, I just
must win my track B this spring, but as to keeping the rash promise I made
to Butch as a Freshman—not a chance!"
It had been at the close of his Freshman year, after Hicks, in the
Interclass Track Meet, had smashed hurdles, broken high-jumping cross-bars,
finished last in several events, and jeopardized his life with the shot and
hammer, that he made the rash vow to which he now had reference. Butch,
believing his sunny friend had entered all the events just to entertain the
crowd, in his fun-loving way, was teasing him about his ridiculous fiascos,
when Hicks had told him the story—how his Dad wanted him to try and be a
famous athlete; he showed Butch a letter, received before the meet, asking
his son to try every event, and to keep on training, so as to win his B
before he graduated. Butch, great-hearted, was surprised and moved by the
revelation that the gladsome youth, even as he was jeered by his friendly
comrades, who thought he performed for sport, was striving to have his
Dad's dream come true; he had sympathized with his classmate, and then his
scatter-brained colleague had aroused his indignation by vowing, with a
swaggering confidence:
"'Oh, just leave it to Hicks!' Remember this, Butch, before I graduate from
old Bannister, I shall have won my B in three branches of sport!"
Butch had snorted incredulously. To win the football or the baseball B,
the gold letter for the former, and the green one for the latter sport,
an athlete had to play in three-fourths of the season's games, on the
"'Varsity"; to gain the white track letter, one had to win a first place in
some event, in a regularly scheduled track meet with another team. And now,
Butch's skepticism seemed confirmed, for at the start of his last year at
college, Hicks had not annexed a single B, though he bade fair to corral
one in the spring in the high-jump.
"Heigh-ho!" chuckled Hicks, at length. "Here I am threatening to get gloomy
again! Well I'll sure train hard to win my track letter, and that seems
all I can do! I'd like to win my three B's, and jeer at Butch, next June,
but—it can't be did! I shall now twang my trusty banjo, and drive dull
care away."
Quite forgetful of the football conclave across the corridor, and of Butch
Brewster's request for quiet, T. Haviland Hicks, Jr. dragged out his
beloved banjo, caressed its strings lovingly, and roared: