"You're pretty cheerful about it," commented Turner, "and you deserved the chance as much as I did."
"If I had been good enough, I'd have gone in before. The coaches know what they are about. If I ever get enough weight on me, I'll have a better chance to make the eleven."
"And then you'll not be able to jump twenty-three feet," said Turner; "for every compensation there's some setback. That's the way of life."
The Codfish was bitter in his condemnation of the entire coaching system which did not discover Armstrong's "supreme merit." "The idea of not using you, Frank, when they had every chance in that last quarter. I call it a murdering shame! They might have pulled out the game."
Frank laughed. "I recognize your talent as a musician and your loyalty as a friend and your virtue as a gentleman, but I still think the coaches knew their jobs, and that when they didn't send me in they had good and sufficient reason for it. I'm not kicking. Anyway, I have two more chances, so what's the use of crying?"
The Codfish continued to growl about the "injustice" for several days, and then, like everyone else, forgot all about football and turned his attentions to the future.
Before the fall Frank had taken occasional dips in the pool when not overtired by the work at the Field. Max, foreseeing a recruit for his swimmers, took pains to encourage him, and, later, at the suggestion of Captain Wilson of the swimming team, Frank became a member of the squad. After the close of the football season, being well up in his studies and glad of the opportunity to take up a form of athletics which appealed to him strongly, he went at the work with great earnestness.
In the try-outs Armstrong won his right to a place on the team in the fifty and one hundred yards, having covered these distances in good time, and, when the intercollegiate meets came along, he did his share in point-winning for Yale.
"Armstrong," said Captain Wilson one afternoon as the two were resting after a practice spin of one hundred and fifty yards, "did you ever try to swim a two-twenty?"
"Used to go more than that distance in open water, but never in the tank. Why?"