“Yesterday,” laughed Gerald, “you were aching to resign. I’m glad you’ve changed your mind about it, Dan. Things looking brighter to-night?”
“Lots, chum. That walk sort of cleared my brain, I guess. I wonder why I never knew Tooker better. He’s a dandy sort.”
In spite of Dan’s request to the contrary, Ned accompanied Kendall to the field the next afternoon. Kendall was clothed in Ned’s football togs, which fitted him fairly well. In appearance they were brand-new, for Ned’s football career had been brief and the immaculate khaki trousers held not the tiniest smooch. What Dan had said to the Second Team’s captain isn’t known, although Ned secretly wondered how the former had managed to put such an extraordinary request. To instate an inexperienced player even on the Second at the tag end of the season was an outlandish proceeding, and Ned knew that Dan had done it only to show his appreciation of Ned’s companionship on that walk to Lloyd. As for Kendall, it never occurred to him to wonder about the proceeding. He was still pretty green in such matters. Staniford was a big, broad-shouldered First Class fellow who took his captaincy of the Second very seriously and worked like a Trojan with his fellows under him. He greeted Kendall very briefly and sent him to the bench, but Ned noticed with amusement that the captain’s gaze followed Kendall with perplexity.
“He’s laying it to politics,” said Ned to himself with a chuckle, “and he’s wondering what Curt is going to do for Vinton in return. Alas, human nature is terribly suspicious!”
After a while Kendall was sent onto the field with a squad of Second Team substitutes to run through signals. It was his first experience with signals, and from his place at left half-back he made so many mistakes at first that the entire squad viewed him with disgust and resentment. But he began to understand what was required, and for the last five minutes of the drill acquitted himself fairly well. But there were many who asked that afternoon:
“Who’s the jay Stany put in here to-day? Where’d he come from? What’s he think this is, a kindergarten?”
From which you may gather the impression that Kendall’s first day as a member of the Second Team was not highly successful. The First was walked and then trotted through two of the new plays that afternoon, and later, when it faced the Second, it tried them out. You can never tell on paper what a play will be on the field, and to-day one of the two plays proved utterly impractical and was immediately dropped. Altogether, that afternoon’s practice was not a success, a fact recognized by coaches, captain and players, and there was a general air of discouragement apparent afterwards. Two graduates, old football players, had put in an appearance that day and had bothered Payson to death with their advice and interference. They had the best intentions in the world and had as likely as not sacrificed time and trouble to be there, but the amount of actual assistance they rendered was nil. Payson growled to Cowles, the manager, on the way up the hill, that if he had his way there’d be a notice at the school entrance reading, “No graduates allowed.”
Kendall had watched the scrimmage from the bench, one of two dozen or so blanket-wrapped substitutes, none of whom he knew save by sight and none of whom was apparently aware of his existence. When, panting and perspiring, the members of the opposing teams rescued their sweaters and trotted or limped back to the gymnasium Kendall followed, secretly proud to be even an humble unit in that army of warriors. He had his shower like the rest of them—Ned having procured him a locker all his own—and dressed slowly, listening to the talk about him and watching the scene. Discouragement, as I have said, was the aftermath to-day. Even the Second Team fellows felt that the afternoon had been practically wasted. Kendall saw Dan, at first half undressed and then, later, swathed in a big towel, standing for minutes at a time talking earnestly, scowling the while, with Tom Roeder or Al Simms or Wallace Hammel. Everyone seemed cross and disgruntled. Mr. Payson, crossing the room once, looked out of sorts, something very unusual for him. Even the door when it closed behind him seemed to slam vindictively. A tussle over the possession of a towel which started good-naturedly between two boys at the farther end of the locker-room ended in a “scrap,” with friends of the contestants thrusting them angrily apart and showing a disposition to “start something” themselves on the slightest provocation. Kendall, who had climbed onto a bench to watch events, felt a bit disappointed when the two boys went off growling in different directions, leaving the towel, the bone of contention, quite forgotten on the floor. The steam from the baths eddied out and filled the room with a humid warmth, and from beyond the partition came the hiss of water and the sudden shriek of a bather as the cold stinging jets struck his glowing body. Little by little the babel of sound lessened. One by one, or in groups, the fellows slammed their locker doors and went out. Kendall, who had been ten minutes tying a shoelace, found himself almost alone. The lights were on now and outside the high windows was deep twilight. He finished his toilet, arranged his clothes in the locker, shut the door and dropped the key in his pocket. At the door of the stairway he turned for a final look over the big room with its disarranged benches, its water-stained floor, its litter of discarded or forgotten towels and its heavy, steamy odor. Somehow he felt that here at last was life!
That last week but one seemed to rush by. There was Tuesday, when the Second scored on the First by a blocked kick, and Wednesday when the First came back and literally tore the Second to shreds, and Thursday, when Kendall got into the scrimmage for a brief five minutes and emerged from what seemed afterwards to have been a wild chaos with a black eye and bleeding knuckles and a positive hatred of Cowles, whose whistle had ended the fray. That was Kendall’s baptism by fire, and it left him trembling with excitement and eager for the morrow. By Friday the First Team had learned its new signals; hard nightly periods in the gymnasium had accomplished that; and had mastered the new plays so that the Second Team went into the scrimmage with no hope of scoring, but only wondering how long they could stand off their opponents. The First was a fighting machine at last, eleven eager, powerful parts working together with a minimum of friction. The Second dug their toes and strained and panted and sweated, but always the First came through, overwhelming them, thrusting them aside, trampling over them to victory. Time and again the Second was given the ball on the First’s ten yards or five yards and told to take it over. But the First was a human stone wall, and Staniford almost cried as his attack curled up like spent bullets against steel. The First was coming fast now and discouragement was forgotten. The school was in the throes of the excitement that always presages the Big Game. The first mass meeting had been held on Wednesday; there was another called for Saturday night. Football songs were heard everywhere. Lessons suffered those days, and the instructors mentally shrugged their shoulders and patiently waited for the madness to end. And then, on Saturday forenoon, the First Team and almost the whole student body went off, cheered and cheering, to Nordham for the last contest before the final game. Kendall went, and Ned, and Gerald, and about everyone we know except Arthur Thompson, and all the way to Nordham the Yardley songs and cheers floated out the car windows:
“Yardley! Yardley!! Yardley!!!”