“And—and that brings me to another thing. Yesterday after the game I got to thinking about all this and I thought I’d go to Bingham and have a frank talk with him. So——”
“Good Lord!” groaned Jonesie.
“Pardon? I thought you spoke. So I did. I told him that I was afraid it was scarcely fair to Rice and—and suggested that maybe I ought to—to sort of drop out for this season.”
“What—what did he say?” asked Jonesie faintly.
“Why, that’s the funny part of it. He said he didn’t know anything about it! At first he even pretended he didn’t know who you were!”
“Good Old Bing!” exclaimed Jonesie, slapping his leg and grinning. “If that isn’t just like the boy!”
Wigman looked puzzled. “But he said——”
“Wait!” Jonesie held up a hand. “I’ll tell you just what he said, Wigman. First off he pretended he didn’t know what you were talking about. Didn’t he?” Wigman nodded. “Then he made believe he didn’t know who I was. When you explained he said, ‘Oh, Jonesie, you mean. Ha, ha!’ Just like that. Then he probably told you straight out that I’d had nothing to do with the thing, that I’d never mentioned your name to him and that, even if I had, it wouldn’t have made a bit of difference. Didn’t he? Isn’t that about what happened, Wigman?”
“Yes, pretty nearly exactly. And he said that the reason they’d put me in place of Rice was because I was playing a better all-around game and that nothing else had anything to do with it.”