The regulars scored another touchdown, but it took longer than the first. Insensibly the line in front of them was stiffening. The backs got into the game; the left wing, stirred by a touch of rivalry, perhaps, began to put a little snap into their work. By the time the regulars had forced the pigskin for the third time over their opponent’s goal-line, the scrub seemed actually to be waking up. Vedder grumbled continually, but nevertheless he worked; many of the others blustered a bit to cover their change of tactics. It was as if they were doubtfully testing out Tompkins’s statement that it was more fun to fight back than to be walked over, and finding an unexpected pleasure in the process.
Amazed at first, Sherman Ward lost no time in helping along the good work. After the third down he gave the scrub the ball and urged them to make the other fellows hustle. They took him up with a will. Saunders’s perfunctory bark became snappy and full of life; more than one of the hitherto grouchy players added his voice to the general racket. But through it all, the good-natured urgence of Dale Tompkins, with that underlying note of perfect faith in their willingness to try anything, continued to stir the fellows to their best efforts. The swiftly falling autumn twilight found the regulars fighting harder than they had ever done before to hold back the newly galvanized scrub. To the latter it brought a novel sensation. For the first time on record they were almost sorry to see the end of practice.
Streaking across the field to the shed which had been fixed up for a dressing-room, they laughed, and joked, and vehemently discussed the latter plays.
“Wait till to-morrow!” shrilly advised one of the scrub. “We won’t do a thing to you guys, will we, Tommy?”
“That’s the talk!” agreed Tompkins, smilingly. “We’ll make ’em hump, all right.”
He seemed quite unconscious of having done anything in the least out of the ordinary. On the contrary, he was filled with grateful happiness at the subtle change in the manner of many of the fellows toward him. It wasn’t that they praised his playing. Except Sherman, who briefly commended him, no one actually mentioned that. But instead of Tompkins, they called him Tommy; they jollied and joshed him, argued and disputed and chaffed with a boisterous friendliness as if he had never been anything else than one of them. And the tenderfoot, hustling into his clothes that he might make haste to start out with his papers, glowed inwardly, responding to the treatment as a flower opens before the sun.
From the background Ranny Phelps observed it all with silent thoughtfulness. Quick-witted as he was, it did not take long for him to realize the changed conditions, to understand that he could not longer treat the new-comer with open, careless insolence as a fellow who did not count. But far from altering his opinion of Tompkins, the new developments merely served to strengthen his dislike, which speedily crystallized into a determination to do some active campaigning against him.
“With a swelled head added to all the rest, he’ll be simply intolerable,” decided Phelps. “I guess I’ve got a little influence left with the crowd in spite of all this rot.” His eyes narrowed ominously as they rested on Harry Vedder chatting affably with the cause of Ranny’s ill temper. “I’ll start with you, my fat friend,” he muttered contemptuously under his breath. “You need a good jacking-up before you indulge in any more foolishness.”
CHAPTER V
TROUBLE AHEAD
In spite of all that had happened that day, Dale did not forget his appointment with Mr. Curtis. He hurried through supper, and pausing only to tell his mother where he was going, he slipped out of the house and started at a trot toward the scoutmaster’s house. Mr. Curtis himself opened the door, greeted the boy cheerily, and ushered him into a room on the left of the hall, a room lined with books and pictures, with a fire glowing and sputtering on the hearth and some comfortable arm-chairs drawn up beside it.