“Eh?” said Babe, looking up. “Joe’s mother?”
I chuckled, but Joe was too depressed to even smile. “The cat,” he said. “Go on. It’s further along. Where it begins ‘Now for our news.’”
Now for our news [I went on]. Your Uncle Preston has just bought him a new car and he called up this morning and suggested that we might run over to the School Saturday in time for the football game. Seems to me it’s quite a ways to go, nigh eighty miles, but your Uncle says we can do it in two hours and a half, and your mother’s willing and so I guess you’re likely to see us around one o’clock if Preston doesn’t run us into a telegraph pole or something, like he did his old car. We are aiming to get there in time to visit with you a little before you go to play football. I hope you will do your best Saturday, son, for your mother’s been telling your Uncle and Aunt Em some pretty tall yarns about your football playing, not knowing very much about it, of course, and I guess they’ll be downright disappointed if you don’t win that game. Anne Walling was up to the house Sunday—
“That’s all,” groaned Joe, and reached for the letter.
“Well,” said I, “what’s the big idea? Why the forlorn countenance? Don’t you want to see your folks, or what?”
“No,” said Joe. “I mean yes, of course I do! Only, don’t you see, you big boob, what a mess I’m in? They’re expecting me to play, aren’t they? And I won’t play, will I? How am I going to explain it to them? Why, they think—”
Joe stopped.
“You’ve been lying to ’em,” grunted Babe.
“Honest, I haven’t Babe,” cried Joe. “I’ve never told them a thing that wasn’t so, but—well, you know how it is! A fellow’s folks are like that. They just get it into their heads that he’s a wonder, and—and jump at conclusions. Of course, I did say that I was on the team—”
“That was a whopper, wasn’t it?” I asked.