“The idea doesn’t interest you, then?” asked Arnold sarcastically.
“I wouldn’t say that,” Toby replied, getting a new grip on his knees. “I have a comprehensive intellect, Arn, and all sorts of things that wouldn’t appeal to ordinary minds——”
“Oh, go to thunder! I hope Frick does get it, you poor fish!”
“May the best man win,” said Toby cheerfully. “Them’s my sentiments. Come on. Let’s eat.”
By Monday it was pretty generally known that Will Curran was lost to the football team for the rest of the season. The injury to his knee sustained in the Brown and Young’s game had proved far more serious than at first supposed and an X-ray examination had shown that a cast was necessary. To be sure, the Greenburg surgeon, called into consultation by the school doctor, spoke vaguely of “benefits reasonably to be expected from a fortnight’s care,” but no one was fooled, least of all Curran. By the middle of the week he was out on crutches, but he was there to help in the coaching of the backs and not to play. The blow was a sore one to the school, and for several days gloom a foot thick hung over it. Then, since Coach Lyle went on about his business of developing a winning football team quite as cheerfully and whole-heartedly as ever, and since Errol Noyes buckled down and worked like a Trojan to fill Curran’s shoes, the gloom thinned out and vanished altogether. After all, the reports from Broadwood were far from disheartening: not the newspaper stuff written by the Broadwood correspondents, but the underground rumors that percolated somehow from the rival school through Greenburg and thence up the hill to Yardley. Broadwood was but three miles beyond Greenburg, and since her students came to that town for purchases and amusement, just as Yardley fellows did, stories were bound to leak out. The local rumors just now had it that Broadwood was having much difficulty in filling her back-field with the right material. In fact, the rumors were borne out by the evidence of the last two contests in which the Green had taken part. For Broadwood to be defeated by Franklin was something unheard of and unthought of, but that had happened two weeks since. And last Saturday, in the Nordham game, she had managed to squeeze through to victory by a mere seven points. So, as the more optimistic of the Yardley enthusiasts pointed out, even the loss of Curran was not sufficient cause for conceding a Broadwood victory.
Coach Lyle did as Arnold had surmised he might do. He took Sim Clarke from the ranks of the end substitutes and turned him back into a quarter, and it was generally allowed that, with Curran coaching him, Sim might develop into a valuable player. Meanwhile, Noyes worked fairly satisfactorily. Indeed, in the Nordham game the next Saturday he ran the team so well that even Tom Fanning took heart and stopped predicting to a few close friends—comprising most of the team!—a victory for the rival school. Toby heard from Sid Creel that Roy Frick was so certain of being taken to the First that he had tried to persuade Phil Stone to give him the First Team signal code! That, Frick had explained, was so he could take hold without loss of time. Toby had not put much value on Arnold’s suggestion that one T. Tucker might be elevated to the varsity ranks and consequently was not at all disappointed.
The Second took a beating every time it went against the First nowadays, for the latter was fast rounding into late season form. Now and again it managed to throw a scare into Coach Lyle’s bunch, but that is the best it could do. Ordinarily, if it kept the First to two scores, or managed to score itself, it swaggered quite sickeningly. Toby and Frick still struggled for supremacy, with little to choose between them, it seemed. Frick undoubtedly excelled Toby in individual work, being surer in tackling and in running with the ball. On the other hand, Toby was rather more steady when it came to catching punts and could get more out of the team. Perhaps the latter ability was due to the fact that he was far better liked than Frick.
The Yardley-Nordham game was uninteresting save as it gave the Blue a chance to study comparative scores. Nordham played a listless game, partly owing to the absence of three players who had been hurt in the Broadwood contest, and, although she twice managed to hold Yardley under her goal-posts, she proved an easy victim, the home team winning by a score of 19 to 0. Compared to Broadwood’s 7 to 0 victory, this looked pretty good until one recalled that Nordham was lacking three regulars and was evidently still feeling the effects of last week’s contest. Coach Lyle worked in most of his second-string and third-string players in the last period. If he hadn’t, there might have been another score to Yardley’s credit. The cheering section kept very busy that afternoon, trying out several new songs and rehearsing all the old ones in preparation for the big game, in spite of the fact that a mean, dispiriting drizzle fell all during the last half. Clarke got a chance to show what he had for a few minutes in the fourth period and gave the impression of having very little. But as he had been at it less than a week it was hardly fair to judge him harshly.
So, with only one minor game remaining, Yardley set her face hopefully toward the supreme test two weeks hence.