Frances was giving him scant heed.
The reins were thrown across the dash-board, trusting Starlight's scant sagacity. In the whip-stand was thrust the stick of her pennant. It fluttered in the soft air, the first unfurled, and the boys beyond the barriers cheered it lustily. It was not destined to stay there. Before the game was half over, Frances, standing on her feet, was waving it wildly above her head.
The home team was playing magnificently. The visiting eleven had beaten them the year before: they were not doing so now. The field was wild. Call after call, college yell, keen irony, a cheer for this play, a jeer for that, urged on the University men. The visitors held stolidly to their work. The boys beyond the barriers were doing everything to rattle them, but the game went close. The home team made one score, the visitors had nothing, the field went wild with cheering; the visitors scored, there was silence. Once more the home team made a point; the umpire snapped his watch, called time; there was a pandemonium of yells.
Frances, standing, the pennant in her hand, watched the team jump the ropes, spent, worn, but happy with victory. Lawson was still in the arena, easing the defeat of the visitors by skilful flattery of their play, when she drove out. She watched the men, as she drove down the road, running along the field path through the sere grasses, their arms close to their sides, their sweaters up to their chins, the hair on their foreheads heavy with sweat. Lawson overtook them just where the path came out into the road. He was the last. His play had gone far to winning the day. Frances with quick fingers unfastened the rosette on her breast and flung it to him as she went spinning by.
Lawson crushed it in his hand and ran on; his bath, his clothes, they cost him short time. He slipped from his room, down the quadrangle before the crowd was well back.
As it chanced, Frances, when he rang the bell of the professor's house, was half-way up the stair. An open door and drawn portière showed an empty room beyond, the firelight shining in the library darkened by the coming twilight. The hall was dusky. Frances' supple figure leaned over the banister.
"Bravo!" she called gayly down to him.
Susan banged the door as she went through. She was not yet won to "fur-awayers."
"It was splendid, splendid!" cried Frances, coming slowly down, her hand slipping along the banister.