But although Jim tumbled into bed in short time he didn’t go right to sleep. Instead he lay awake for quite a while wondering how long, if he didn’t make a much better showing in class, faculty would allow him to enjoy his new honors. And when sleep did come to him finally it was because he had comforted his conscience with the firm resolve to buckle down to-morrow and study as never before.
But, alas, how many of our good resolutions survive the night? The next day was filled with new experiences for Jim, and much hard, gruelling work on the field, and a blackboard lecture in dining hall after dinner. And so, when study time came, he was tired and nervous and his thoughts absolutely refused to concern themselves with studies. And the following day Mr. Groff, the mathematics instructor, lectured him in front of the whole class, which didn’t improve Jim’s state of mind a bit, and Mr. Hanks viewed him sadly but forebore to reprimand him. In his other studies he was doing fairly well as yet.
There was no practice on Friday and Jim locked himself up in his room, in spite of the fact that Johnny had instructed them to stay out of doors and take mild exercise, and heroically studied. But the faculty of assimilation seemed to have deserted him of late and it was the hardest sort of work to make anything stick in his memory for more than a minute. But he kept at it until supper time and then emerged tired and fagged.
In the Merton contest the next day, the last before the “big game,” Crofton showed flashes of first-rate football. Although he didn’t say so, Johnny was well satisfied, for he knew that, barring accidents, his team would play at least twenty per cent. better a week from that day. Crofton was still coming, and a team that is coming is better than one that has reached the zenith of its development. Merton went down in defeat, 17 to 8, after a hard-fought battle. Best of all, Crofton emerged from the fray with scarcely a scratch, at all events with no real injuries to any of her players. Jim played well in that game. For four twelve-minute periods he forgot all about Latin and mathematics and thought and lived football. And Johnny, who hadn’t liked the haggard look in Jim’s eyes, concluded that his fears were groundless, and confided to Captain Sargent after the game that “That fellow Hazard is the best find of the season.”
And then, on Monday, the sword fell!
He was summoned to the office at noon. What Mr. Gordon said and what excuses Jim offered are of small consequences. We are interested in results. The result in this case was that Jim emerged from Academy Hall feeling that life was indeed a very tragic thing. That afternoon Parker played at left guard on the eleven and all the school knew that Hazard was “in wrong with the Office.”
Johnny was a philosopher. Such things had happened to him before. He wasted no breath in regrets nor recriminations. He picked the next best man for Jim’s place and went ahead. Perhaps he was a little grimmer in the face that afternoon and a little more silent, but that was all. Duncan Sargent, his nerves already jangling as a captain’s nerves are likely to jangle when the last week of the season arrives, was in despair.
“First it’s Gary,” he groaned, “and then it’s Marshall and now it’s Hazard. Well, I’d like to know what’s going to happen next! We might as well hand the game to Hawthorne and save the trouble of playing!”
Poke, to whom these remarks were addressed just before the beginning of practice, was as gloomy as his captain. He had known nothing of Jim’s misfortune until a few minutes before, for Jim had not shown up at dinner hour and Poke had not glimpsed him since morning.
“Gee,” he muttered, “it’s all a surprise to me. I never suspected that Jim wasn’t getting on all right in class. You don’t suppose J. G. will let him back in a day or two?”