"You will give me a chance, won't you?" he said.
"Yes," said the captain, laying his hand on his shoulder with a smile. "You'll get chance enough, my boy. Fact is, I'm going to start you in at end on the scrub. You'll get all the hard knocks you're looking for there. You won't get any credit for what you do—but you boys are what's going to make the team."
"Oh, sir, do you mean it?"
"I'm in the habit of meaning things."
"I'll—I'll——" began Stover, and then stopped before the impossibility of expressing how many times his life should be thrown to the winds.
"I know you will," said the captain, amused. "And now, you young bulldog, back to your room and shake yourself together."
"But I want to go on; I'm feeling fine."
"Off the field," said the captain with terrific sternness.
Dink went like a dog ordered home, slowly, unwillingly, turning from time to time in hopes that his captain would relent.
When he had passed the chapel and the strife of the practice had dropped away he felt all at once sharp, busy pains running up his back and over his shoulders. But he minded them not. At that moment with the words of the captain—his captain forever now—ringing in his ears, he would have gone forth gratefully to tackle the whole team, one after another, from wiry little Charlie DeSoto to the elephantine P. Lentz.