“Obligation be blowed,” said Rusty. “What are you talking about, anyway? I don’t get you, Kenton.”
“Why, what I mean is—look here, Rusty. You know that if I wasn’t baseball captain I’d have been let out two weeks ago. Well, I don’t want to play football enough to keep my place by favor, and so—”
“Oh, that’s it,” interrupted Rusty. “I get you now. So you think I’m nursing you along because you’re baseball captain, eh?”
“Well,” answered Joe, smiling, but uneasy because of a sudden setting of Rusty’s face, “it’s done, isn’t it?”
Rusty shook his head, his mouth drawn to a grim line.
“Not this fall, Kenton,” he said.
Joe stared back a moment, and then, as Rusty said no more, laughed perplexedly. “Well—” he began vaguely.
“When you aren’t any more use to the team, Kenton,” announced the coach quietly, “I’ll tell you. But you wait until I do. If every one of that bunch who played ragged this afternoon came to me and resigned I wouldn’t have any team to-morrow. Good night.”
Joe, still perplexed although greatly relieved, went back and reported the conversation to Gus. Gus called him a moron.