"What are you driving at, anyway? I'm neither the captain nor the coach."
"Of course you are not, fortunately, but you're the quarter, and as such you can make or break a halfback that is trying for a place on the team. At present your room-mate, Hillard, is playing at right half, and, naturally, since he is a fraternity brother of yours, you want him to stay there. And you don't want any one else, even though some one else might improve the eleven, to win his place. Isn't that so?"
Chip sat glowering at the speaker, but did not answer.
"All right. There's an old saying I've seen somewhere, and I guess it's true, that 'silence gives consent.' You admit what I've said?"
"I don't admit anything of the kind," snapped Chip. "Hillard is a better back than this fellow Turner will ever be."
"Since," went on the Wee One, as cool as a cucumber, and paying no attention to Chip's interruption, "since you agreed that what I say is true, I want to know if you will play square with Turner. Goodness knows this eleven has been messed up by you and your friends in Gamma Tau pretty badly, and if there's the smallest little bit of a chance to improve it, and let us have an opportunity to pull out the Warwick game, you ought to be willing for the sake of yourself, if not for the school, to drop the favorites."
Chip was showing evidences of the greatest difficulty to keep from bringing the matter then and there to blows. He was opening and shutting his hands and gritting his teeth. Finally he burst forth:
"I don't know what you duffers are here for, trying some kind of bullyragging on me. It's you fellows who are playing favorites, not me. Now I want you both to get out of this room and stay out. I'll play just whoever I wish on that eleven."