Deep thought slowed Specs' steps on the return trip. In front of the Magoons' the forgiving Felix crept out and made it plain he was sorry and wanted to be friends again. The Scout stared at him with a slow smile.
"Come on!" he called. "I can't go back to school till I get that note, and I can't get that note till father comes back to town. Tell you what, Felix; you and I will chase out along the lake shore and find one of those smelly ferns for Miss Seeby. I know where they grow. Come on, old boy!"
Directly after school that afternoon, as has been intimated, Professor Leland called a mass meeting. After Marion Genevieve Chester, as president of the student association, rapped for order, the principal rose from his chair on the platform and stepped forward.
"To-morrow afternoon," he began, "Lakeville High School plays its second football game. I have called this meeting to suggest that we organize to encourage the team during the game. We made enough noise at the other; but some of us cheered at the wrong times, when it wasn't quite fair to our opponents, and not at the right times, when it might have heartened our own boys; and some of us cheered all by ourselves, without any attempt to swell the volume of applause and encouragement. What I wish to suggest is practicing the Lakeville cheer, till we can pour it forth like the boom-boom-boom of a cannon, and the appointing of cheer leaders for the different sections."
Nominations were promptly offered, and the candidates as promptly elected. Profiting by that other meeting, the Scouts made no attempt to win a place.
"I wonder," continued Professor Leland, "if all of us realize that we may help, even if we are not playing on the team itself. Let me show you what I mean."
And then, while Bunny and Buck listened just a little more intently than the others, perhaps, he told them of the drop-kicks that had failed in the first game because of wind and dust and bad passes, and how Rodman Cree had pointed out the handicaps and made possible the goal when the teams changed sides.
A little applause rippled over the room. Everybody squirmed about in his seat to see how Rodman took it, but it was soon evident that the boy had not attended the meeting.
"The Grant City team," went on the speaker, "had a curious and effective trick formation, which was solved by our boys in the nick of time, thanks to Captain Claxton. Now, if some one of us who was not playing had discovered that trick and warned our team, it would have helped."