What need is there to go into detail of that disastrous afternoon? Three times more did the jubilant Barrowites plough through Harding's demoralized eleven, and when the final whistle blew, the Queen's crowd saw the awful record on the board of 23 to nothing. It was the worst defeat that had ever come to Queen's at the hands of any but Warwick. It was a sting never to be forgotten, and only to be wiped out with reverse figures twice the size.
"Well, I'm glad that's over," said Gleason to Frank as the crowd slowly filed down off the stand, and the tired teams drew each into a knot and gave the yell for the opponents. "If it hadn't been for that rotten fumble of young Turner I think the Wheel-barrows wouldn't have gone home so full."
"It wasn't a fumble, Mr. Gleason," said the Wee One, "and if you thought it was you better run right along to the oculist and have him put his prettiest pair of specs on you!"
"Oh! p'raps it was a clever little piece of legerdemain then," grunted Gleason, but neither Frank nor the Wee One heard him. They were hotfooting it after Jimmy, who was tailing after the squad with his eyes on the ground and gloom in his heart.
Frank ran up behind him and slipped his arm around his shoulder. "We saw it, Jimmy," he said. "I didn't think he dare carry a grudge against you so far. But it lost him the game."
"I don't know," returned Jimmy. "They were too heavy for us." But there was a lightening of his spirits when he felt that the play was not entirely misunderstood. "Dixon made it hard for me to get the ball several times, but he always did it so cleverly that no one could see him. I wouldn't believe it if I hadn't seen it and been the victim of it as well. He got me out and his room-mate in."
"He got you out sure enough," said Frank. "I suspected he would swing something against you, and he was determined to get his room-mate in at any cost."
"Yes, and it cost him the game," said Patterson. "That's what you get for playing favorites. I'll bet the scrub could have put up a better argument against the Academy than the First eleven, the way it played to-day. Wonder what the coach will say to them?"
But the coach had little to say.