“Oh, bother Betty; she’s a good sort. But let’s hurry, so we can get down early. I am half sorry I asked the crowd. Think I’d rather have—”
They both began to run then toward the dining-room, where the school was already at supper.
That evening “the crowd,” as our friends called themselves in their modest schoolboy way, including Kit, Tony, Jimmie Lawrence, Teddy Lansing and Tack Turner, went to the Inn and spent a merry evening under Mrs. Wilson’s indulgent chaperonage. There were other parties there, including the parents and sisters and cousins and an occasional aunt of various boys; a gathering of the clans loyal to Deal; a score or so of Old Boys, mostly from Kingsbridge, back for the game, who had overflowed from the crowded school into the Inn. In the proud consciousness of their undoubted superiority as college men, the Old Boys somewhat cast their younger brethren in the shade, and treated them with patronizing airs, asking them occasional questions in a patriarchal manner.
Tony alone amongst his companions seemed to shine that evening. There flashed into prominence, to their first observation, in his manner, his appearance even, something of that charm which was more and more making him a favorite, and which, though his schoolfellows never analyzed it, was to be cordially recognized later on. It would have been hard to say in just what Tony’s charm lay, perhaps it was that a certain serious sweetness of disposition, the finer traits of his character, for the most part unnoticed in the helter-skelter rough-and-readiness of school life, were emerging. Women, who are always quicker than men to estimate a personality, to be conscious of its finer as well as its more obvious strains, felt this at once in Tony. He was a success with Mrs. Wilson and the girls. His own friends, intimate with him in all the openness and yet sometimes quite misleading circumstances of everyday existence, who ordinarily thought of him merely as a boon companion, a genial playmate, gifted with a nice sense of honor but ready for a lark and a risk with the most reckless, were a little surprised at the evident impression he made not only on Mrs. Wilson, but on Betty and Barbara Worthington. His friends saw in him that night a facility despite his modesty, a social poise untempered by self-consciousness, that more distinctly than ever before singled him out as their natural leader. Kit indeed, felt several miserable pangs of jealousy, as he noted Barbara’s quick response to Tony’s gayety, and her unconcealed desire to remain part of the group of which Tony was in some sense the center rather than wander off with him for the too obvious pleasure of a tête-à-tête. But Kit himself was too whole-souled, too merry of nature, to sulk, and save for an occasional growl to which no one paid attention, before the evening was over, he was enjoying Tony as he had never enjoyed him before, wondering at the quick development of this social side of his character which had been unobserved.
As for Tony he was quite unconscious of anything save that he was enjoying himself immensely; that Betty Wilson was an extremely attractive girl, a thoroughly “good sort,” as Kit had said; and that he wished there were more frequent occasions when the girls came to Deal. He was not sentimental, so that he did not imagine that he had fallen in love.
The day of the game was a perfect one for football, cool and gray, with no wind blowing. The teams were in fine condition, and the Boxford boys, who had come over in the old-time coach across the hills, looked tremendously big and strong. Tony was still playing end, the position to which he had been so unexpectedly assigned in his Third Form year, and in which, through no fault of his own, he had been the means of losing the game. To be sure in the following year, when the circumstances of that defeat had been made rather generally clear, he had redeemed himself by good playing and they had won, but he felt a keen desire this year to blot out forever, if it might be, the bitter memory of that first Boxford game. He wanted, quite selfishly he told himself,—and perhaps he was thinking a little of Betty—to win a game as definitely as he had lost one.
As the team stepped out onto the field that afternoon, resplendent in their red sweaters with the big black D across the breast, and he sniffed the cool air and heard the chorus of Deal cheers ring down the lines, he lifted his head like a good hunter keen for the chase, and a thrill of determination went through him like a shiver. They must win!
Billy Wendell had the ball under his arm as they came onto the field. Immediately he tossed it to Kit, prominent to the spectators for his shock of yellow hair and his bright red cheeks despite the fact that this was his first appearance on the school team. Kit tossed it to Barney Clayton, who muffed it, and then made a quick dive and fell on it very much as a kitten plays with a ball of yarn.... So for fifteen minutes or so the preliminary practice went on, until the boys were well warmed up for the strenuous work of the game.
Then came the shrill note of the referee’s whistle; the two captains met in the center of the field; the Boxford boy called and won the toss, and the two teams trotted out to their places for the kick-off. There were roars from the two grand-stands, the antiphonal ringing-out of the Deal and Boxford cheers; another blast from the referee’s whistle, and Kit, who was playing center, gave the ball a kick that sent it sailing down the field to within five yards of the Boxford goal posts. A Boxford back caught it, but Tony downed him in his tracks.