“Oh, no!”
“Then we’d better be hitting the trail. We’ve only got twenty minutes to get back in.”
“It’s funny about that suit,” mused Kendall after they were across the bridge. “I hadn’t any sort of idea of buying anything when I went in with you. You were the one who was looking for clothes, Ned, and you didn’t buy a thing!”
“I was just looking. You certainly surprised me, Curt. I hadn’t any idea you’d be such a sport. It’s funny how things happen like that. Sometimes a fellow hasn’t any idea of doing a thing, and then, first thing he knows, he’s gone and done it! Queer, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” murmured Kendall. “But—it’s a mighty good-looking suit of clothes, isn’t it?”
[CHAPTER XIII]
GOLF WITH BROADWOOD
All that week Kendall had wished that there were two of him that he might both follow football practice and pursue the tantalizing intricacies of golf and the friendship of Ned Tooker. He had attended football practice only twice, on Tuesday and Thursday, and practice was getting very interesting and exciting now, for there was a scrimmage every afternoon between the first and second teams, and, since it was now the height of the season, those scrimmages were no love-feast. Every player was animated either by the stern determination to hold his place at all costs—if he was a first-string man—or to wrest someone else’s place from him—if he was a substitute. And so it was nip and tuck between many good friends. There was an exciting contest on between Norton, the regular right end, and Sayer, a younger fellow who was the first choice substitute. And Arthur Thompson had created a mild sensation by beating out both Green and Fayette and standing an excellent show of playing for a time at least in the remaining games as a substitute to Stearns. The rivalry for the position of quarter-back was less intense just for the reason that it was Payson’s policy to use both Simms and Holmes to about the same extent. Hammel, Simms, Ridge and Norton had been receiving special instruction in punting and drop-kicking every day for a week past, but Simms and Norton were the only ones who it seemed had profited much. Simms was getting off better punts and Norton was gradually developing into a fair drop-kicker. It was this dawning ability that might insure him his position and defeat Sayer’s ambition.
On Saturday the team left early in the forenoon for East Point to play Carrel’s School, and with the team went fully half the student body, almost all, in fact, who could obtain permission and enough money to meet the expenses of the trip. Kendall, of course, was barred from going by his probation. And he gathered comfort from the thought that even if he had not been on probation he still would have been forced to remain at home, since in purchasing that suit of clothes he had virtually bankrupted himself. However, Fate provided him with a fairly satisfactory substitute for the football game in the golf match that afternoon between Yardley and Broadwood. The Broadwood representatives were on hand early; seven of them in all. They were a nice-looking lot of boys; Kendall mentally called them “swells,” but in no derogatory sense, since, now that he was the possessor of a new suit of clothes and had discovered a blue necktie among his belongings, he secretly considered entering that class himself!