AFTER DUE CONSIDERATION CAPTAIN MACLAREN AND I HAVE DECIDED TO PLAY DEERING AT LEFT END IN TO-MORROW’S GAME.
At last they were gone, having wrung Tony’s hand two or three times each, and Deering and Lawrence were left alone. For a moment neither boy spoke, but stood looking at each other, their eyes glistening with friendliness that had been heightened by the excitement and the common joy. Jimmie was as unaffectedly glad as if the honor had come to him. Then Tony slipped into a chair by the window, and putting his head upon his hands stared out upon the campus, which was beginning to be covered with groups of boys, converging toward the Chapel. “I wish old Jack had let me go out and help celebrate,” he said, with a little laugh. “I can’t sleep if I do go to bed.”
Jimmie sat down on the chair, and slipped his arm about Tony’s neck. “You must, dear old boy, all the same; ‘cause you’ve got to win for us.”
Tony laughed, and clasping Jimmie’s hand, he looked up at him with a sudden seriousness that in after days Jimmie was to recall as having been profoundly significant. “Jim,” he said, “I know that Sandy and Larry Cummings and Chapin and the rest of ‘em can play football a thousand times better than I will ever do, but just the same there’s something that kind of tells me that I am going to have my chance to-morrow in a special way. I must do something to prove to Jack and Sandy that they aren’t making a mistake. Oh, Jim, you don’t know how I feel—awfully puffed up and absurdly small. I wish it were you.”
“You’re all right, old boy; and Sandy and Jack know their business a blame sight better than we do. Now cut it for bed, and I’ll go out and help make the night hideous.”
In his own rooms, where Tony went as soon as Jimmie left him, he found Carroll deep in a Morris chair and the pages of a French novel. “Hello, Reggie,” he cried, “aren’t you going to p-rade?”
“Not I, kiddo,” answered Carroll, indifferently. “I fancy I’ve reached that patriarchal age, in spirit if not in the flesh, when one puts away childish things. I am mildly moved, however, to go and tell Stenton and Maclaren that I approve of them, but I’ll content myself with saying that to you. It is worth while to have swift-moving pedalities, isn’t it?”
“So it seems,” Tony muttered, a little disappointed by the coolness of his friend’s tone. “Well, good-night,” he added, “I am going to turn in.”
Carroll had not meant to be supercilious, and for a moment after Tony left him, avoiding his glance as he had, he laid down his novel and started toward Deering’s bedroom. His hand was almost on the knob, the generous hearty words on his lips, but he hesitated, and at last turned back and took up his book. The study door was open, and at that moment Mr. Morris paused at it, evidently on his way to the campus.