In his room Kendall washed up for dinner and then sat down on the edge of his bed and strove to think it over. He was very glad that Harold was not there. It would be nice to tell somebody about it, but surely not him. There was the electric torch on the table. He wondered if it would light if he tried it. Funny how it had come unscrewed last night. He would never forget the scene when the light had streamed out across The Prospect. He wondered what the four Broadwood fellows thought of it; what explanation they had fashioned to account for the sudden surprise; whether they connected it with the boy who had sat next to them in the drug store.
Then he pulled himself up. Why, he wasn’t thinking of his misfortune at all! He was thinking of what had happened when—when he had been a hero. He felt mighty little like a hero to-day! Probation! No more football! That was tough. Worse than that, though, was the thought of his father’s disappointment, and his mother’s. He must write that letter and tell them the real facts of it. It wasn’t doing very well, he reflected ruefully, to get on probation within the first fortnight of school!
Well—! A fellow had to eat, though, probation or no probation, and he suddenly became aware of a very healthy appetite. After all, he hadn’t really done anything very bad, and he had told the truth to Mr. Collins, and—and, oh, shucks, he was going to dinner!
[CHAPTER VIII]
THE FIRST GAME
Kendall wrote the letter to his father that afternoon, about the time he was accustomed to chase the pigskin. He felt rather better after the letter was finished, and he took it down and dropped it into the letter box in front of Oxford Hall with a sigh of relief. At least, his parents would know that his conscience was clear. He wondered if his father would be very angry with Mr. Collins! To anticipate a little, however, Mr. Burtis’s reply when it reached his son was not entirely satisfactory to that youth. In the first place, asked that worthy Puritan, why had Kendall been sitting around in a drug store? Had he joined the town loafers? Satan, reminded Farmer Burtis, was still finding mischief for idle hands to engage in. Bluntly he suggested that Kendall remain at school and study his lessons and not go gallivanting into the city. As for the punishment, he guessed it wouldn’t do Kendall any harm to have to stay around the school and keep away from the football field; he had heard of boys getting their arms and legs broken playing football!
Kendall’s mother, however, wrote a letter full of sympathy for Kendall and indignation at Mr. Collins. That letter was like a pat on the back. The only unsatisfactory part of it was where Mrs. Burtis said she didn’t see why Kendall needed to have shielded those bad boys who really merited the punishment. Kendall was for a moment disappointed in his mother. But he presently “guessed that a woman doesn’t look at those things in quite the way a man does,” and viewed her more leniently. When he replied he explained at great length that it would have been a most dishonorable action to have revealed the identity of the Broadwood fellows, and hinted that nothing short of boiling oil or melted lead would ever induce him to speak. Then he struck the pose of a martyr for a page or so and inscribed himself “Your loving son, Kendall.”
But these letters and replies came later, and we are getting ahead of our story.
As Mr. Collins had suggested, there was no reason why Kendall’s schoolmates should know of his probation, and so Kendall kept the knowledge to himself. There were times when the temptation to tell Harold was strong, times when Kendall felt the need of talking it over with somebody and getting sympathy. But Harold was not what Kendall called a very sympathetic soul, and so the secret was kept. At the end of two or three days the incident of the green paint ceased to interest the school and for the present it remained a mystery. Other things happened to engage the attention of the fellows. There was first scrimmage one Thursday afternoon, when they were allowed to get for the first time some idea of what the line-up of the football team was to be. And then, two days later, came the first game of the schedule, a contest of four eight-minute periods with Greenburg High School. It was a warm afternoon and players and spectators alike sweltered in the sun. Kendall witnessed his first real game of football and found it interesting, although as a matter of fact it was rather a dull and loosely played contest. Neither team had “got together” as yet, and fumbles, mixed signals and other misplays were frequent on both sides. Yardley took the lead in the second period by seizing advantage of a Greenburg fumble on the latter’s twenty yards and from there working over the goal line for a touchdown from which Wallace Hammel missed a try at goal by some six yards. In the next period Greenburg tied the score, missing an even easier goal, and in the last period of play Stearns, right half-back, got away around Greenburg’s end for a sixty-yard run and another score. Hammel again missed a goal and the final score stood 10 to 5.