“Well—” Joe hesitated, gulped and blurted it out finally. “I was thinking that maybe, seeing that no one cares much whether we beat Mills or not, I was thinking that maybe if you fellows spoke to Rusty he might let me play for a while!”
“You have some swell thinks,” said I.
Babe didn’t say anything for a moment. Just sat there hunched up in his chair like a heathen idol. Finally he said, sort of thoughtful: “Rusty won’t be here Saturday.”
“You could speak to him to-morrow,” said Joe eagerly.
Babe went on like he hadn’t heard him. “He and Hop and Danny and Slim are going to Hawleyville to see Munson play. Newt Lewis’ll be in charge on the side line and Pete Swanson or Gus here will be field captain, I guess. Of course, Rusty will say what the line-up’s to be, but if one of the fellows was taken out, say, after the first half, it would be up to Newt to pick a sub. If I was you, Joe, I’d wait until Saturday.”
“But I don’t believe Newt would put me in,” objected Joe sadly. “There’s Hearn and Torrey—”
“Torrey’ll be playing in the first line-up, in Hop’s place,” said Babe calmly. “There’ll be you and Hearn and Jimmy Sawyer. Now if it happens that Hop leaves Gus here temporary captain, and Gus says a good word for you—”
“Say,” I interrupted, “what do you think I am? I’d like to help Joe out of his hole, of course, but you know mighty well he can’t play half-back like Bob Hearn! It’s all right to say that the Mills game is unimportant, but you know pesky well we want to win it, and Rusty wants us to. Besides, Munson licked them ten to nothing two weeks back, and we don’t want to do any worse than that, do we? No, sir, you can count me out! I’ll stand by my friends, Babe, but I’m not going to risk the old ball game that way!”
“No one’s asking you to risk anything,” answered Babe, yawning like he was going to swallow his foot. “You know well enough we can put it all over that Mills outfit. If we couldn’t we’d have a swell chance to beat Munson! They’ve lost that good full-back they had when Munson played ’em, Gus.”