“Oh! What did you tell him?”
“Declined, with proper expression of polite regret. I dare say I’d feel rather the fool if I failed at Lyceum. Still——”
“Fail? Why should you? Don’t be an ass! You’ll go through flying. Well, let’s get washed up. I’m as hungry as a bear!”
CHAPTER IV
“ONLY THE CAPTAIN!”
The football training table was customarily formed about four days after the beginning of the term. It was in reality two tables, at which were gathered some twenty-two of the foremost candidates. Precedent had established a hard-and-fast dietary, of which such articles as underdone steaks and chops and roasts of beef formed the fixed basis. Fresh bread was taboo, as was pastry and most other forms of dessert. Eggs, certain cereals, milk and fresh vegetables and fruit formed the balance of the menu. A patented preparation of grain took the place of coffee. Usually by the time the season drew to an end you got so you could drink the substitute without making a face. But before that time you had become heartily sick of the monotony of the food and sighed deeply for such health-destroying viands as baked macaroni, apple pie, broiled ham, suet puddings and coffee—especially and constantly coffee! Even the twice-a-week ice cream, observed enviously by the neighboring tables, didn’t make up for the breaded veal cutlets or hot rolls that passed with teasing fragrance but never stopped. The training table necessitated what practically amounted to the preparation of two meals in the school kitchen, a fact that doubtless led the faculty to listen sympathetically to the suggestion of Mr. Haynes. This suggestion reached the faculty by way of the Committee on Athletics, popularly called the “Athletic Faculty,” and was submitted with the committee’s entire approval. The suggestion was no less than the abolishment of the training table. The first regular faculty conference was held Thursday evening. Mr. Pierson, assistant instructor in English and chairman of the Athletic Faculty, laid the matter before the meeting and read the written argument by the new coach. Subject, he stated, to the approval of the school faculty, the Committee on Athletics proposed to give the plan a trial. After a discussion which, considering the revolutionary character of the proposal, was extremely brief, the faculty set the seal of its approval; without, you will observe, consulting Captain Stuart Harven in the least.
In fact Stuart knew nothing of it until Friday forenoon, and then learned of it in the most haphazard fashion. Wallace Towne, waiting for H Room to empty so that he might attend a Latin class before he had quite forgotten all he had learned overnight, caught Stuart in the corridor of Manning. “See I was in the know about training table, Cap,” he said. “I’m always there with the inside info. What do you think of it? No more raw meat to make us savage. No more parched corn playing coffee. Real food. Great, I say!”
“What are you jabbering about, Wally?” asked Stuart.
“Mean you don’t know?” Wallace looked incredulous. “Why, dearie, faculty’s abolished the dear old training table! Give you my word! It’s a thing of the past. Just like the dodo bird and the tandem play and— All right, ask Jud McColl if you don’t believe me.”
“You’re crazy,” declared Stuart. But his words lacked conviction. “You can’t build up a football team without a training table!”