“Lyons didn’t do so badly,” said the other. “And neither did Wirt. But ‘The’ Dannis was the whole shooting match, pretty nearly. I don’t see why they wanted to put Basker in in the last half. He isn’t a patch on ‘The.’”
“I suppose Driscoll wants to bring him around for second-string man. You’ll see all sorts of combinations tried out for the next month. And they’ll all be about equally punk, too, I guess. What the dickens is the matter with the team nowadays, anyway? Is it the coaching or the leading or what, Steve?”
“Search me! All I know is that it’s rotten. Has been for three years. I don’t think it’s the coaching. This chap Driscoll looks like a good one. Everyone says that. And Fred Lyons is all right, too. There isn’t a fellow in school that can boss a job better than Lyons. I guess it’s a plain case of chronic slump!”
Ira wanted very much to speak out and tell them that possibly some of the fault for the team’s lack of success was due to them. “If,” he said to himself as he watched the two boys turn off toward Sohmer Hall, “you’d stop thinking the team was poor maybe it wouldn’t be. No team, I guess, can do much if no one believes in it. What is needed here is a change of heart! I suppose every fellow connected with the team realises that the school is laughing at him, and I guess that doesn’t help much. Seems to me there ought to be a way to change things, to get the fellows back of the team again. But—I wonder how!”
[CHAPTER X]
ON THE FOURTH SQUAD
“How much does a football suit cost, Humphrey, and where do you buy it?”
Humphrey looked up from his book and smiled quizzically across at the enquirer. “Hello!” he said. “Going to the rescue of the dear old school after all, Rowly?”
Ira nodded slowly. “It sounds sort of silly, I guess,” he replied, “but I’ve decided to have a try at it. I don’t believe for a minute that they’ll keep me more than one day, but Lyons wanted me to try it, and—well, I guess that’s the least I can do. Someone ought to do something for the team besides ‘knock’ it. Where do you get these things you wear?”