"He's awfully cut up. I'm downright sorry for him. He says he's going to pack up and leave."
"And he's been trying to make you do the same, eh?" asked Neil. "Well, you tell him I'm very well satisfied with Erskine and haven't the least desire to change."
"You?" asked Paul.
"Certainly. We hang together, don't we?"
Paul grinned.
"You're a good chap, chum," he said gratefully. "But--" relapsing again into gloom--"you're not losing your place on the team, and you don't know how it feels. When a fellow's set his heart on it--"
"I think I do know," answered Neil. "I know how I felt when my shoulder went wrong and I thought I was off for good and all. I didn't like it. But cheer up, Paul, and give 'em fits Monday. Slam 'round, let yourself loose; show 'em what you can do. Down with Gillam!"
"Oh, I dare say," muttered Paul dejectedly.
Neil laid awake a long time that night; he was full of sympathy for his room-mate. With him friendship meant more than it does to the average boy of nineteen, and he was ready and eager to do anything in his power that would insure Paul's getting into the Robinson game. The trouble was that he could think of nothing, although he lay staring into the darkness, thinking and thinking, until Paul had been snoring comfortably across the room for more than an hour.
The next afternoon, Sunday, Neil, obeying the trainer's instructions, went for a walk. Paul begged off from accompanying him, and Neil sought Sydney. That youth was delighted to go, and so, Neil alternately pushing the tricycle and walking beside it while Sydney propelled it himself, the two followed the river for several miles into the country. The afternoon was cold but bright, and being outdoors was a pleasure to any healthy person. Neil forgot some of his worries and remembered that, after all, he was still a boy; that football is not the chief thing in college life, and that ten years hence it would matter little to him whether he played for his university against her rival or looked on from the bench. And it was that thought that suggested to him a means of sparing Paul the bitter disappointment that he dreaded.