“Duty!” scoffed Mart. “That isn’t duty, that’s Rowland’s fine, old New England conscience. He comes from Vermont——”
“Maine, please,” said Ira.
“I mean Maine, and that’s where they make them. I come from New Jersey, you see, and we don’t have consciences.”
“Haven’t you ever tried it?” asked Ira.
“Football?” Mart shook his head. “No, I never felt reckless enough. I play a little baseball and some tennis and a bit of hockey and can swing a golf stick, but beyond that I don’t participate in athletics.”
“They don’t allow us to take part in more than three sports,” explained Brad, “and that’s Mart’s difficulty. If he went in for football he’d have to give up either baseball, hockey or tennis. And as he thinks he is needed on those teams he hesitates.”
“I do more than hesitate,” replied Mart. “I stand immovable. There are plenty of fellows who can play football. Let them go out and save the country. I’m busy.”
“I don’t see how you could play football, too,” said Ira. “But I guess there are plenty of fellows who could and won’t. I don’t know much about things here yet, but it seems a pity to me that the school doesn’t take more interest in the team.”
“No one can blame you,” said Mart flippantly. “Football at Parkinson, Rowland, is one of the lost arts. It’s like dragon’s blood vases and—and Tyrian purple and Rembrandt paintings. We live in the past, as it were. Football vanished from Parkinson about the time the battle of Bunker Hill took place on Breed’s Hill. That’s a funny thing, by the way. Why do you suppose they fought the Bunker Hill battle where they did? My idea is that Mr. Breed offered them more money and fifty per cent of the moving picture rights. Mr. Bunker must have been frightfully peeved, though, what?”
“Football is in a bad way here, Rowland, and that’s a fact,” said Brad, “but it only needs one successful season to put it on its feet again. And I’m hoping hard that this season will do it. We’ve got a pretty fair start as far as material goes. I mean, we’ve got quite a bunch of last year’s fellows back. The trouble is we can’t seem to get out new material. They just won’t come. Fred has fits and talks about calling a mass meeting and all that, but Driscoll says he can build a team of what he’s got; that he’d rather have fifty fellows who want to play than a hundred who don’t. And I think Driscoll’s dead right.”