“Have to? N-no, I didn’t have to, but what are you going to do when a fellow comes at you like that? Oh, he will come across some day. I’m not worrying.”
Toby laughed. “You’re easy, Sid,” he said. “I suppose next Wednesday he will borrow another fifty cents from you! If fellows were all like you I could be a Rockefeller myself! Here they come!”
Yardley managed to chalk up twelve more points in the last two periods and to keep Greenburg High from scoring. Greenburg weakened badly toward the last, although, like her opponent, she made constant changes in her line-up. During the final period there were moments when the stream of incoming substitutes from the Yardley bench was almost unbroken. Mr. Lyle used three full elevens that afternoon, and then threw in a couple more players just for good measure. There were occasional flashes of brilliancy on the part of the Blue, but for the most part the contest was uninteresting and the playing ragged. Greenburg certainly deserved to lose, but it is doubtful if Yardley deserved to win. However, no one expected much from the team in that game, and no one was very critical.
That evening, alone for awhile in Number 12, Arnold had gone to a lecture in Assembly Hall,—Toby forced himself to face a decision regarding football. Earlier in the week he had promised himself to quit to-day, but now he discovered that he didn’t want to quit. This quarter-back business was mighty interesting, he acknowledged. Not that he supposed for a minute that he would make good on the job: he would never get so that he could rival Frick; never, perhaps, equal Rawson; but a fellow needed some sort of exercise and football provided it. It was really his duty to keep himself in training for hockey.
On the other hand, Latin was proving quite as difficult as he had predicted, and one or two other courses promised to claim lots of his time. If he really meant to win a scholarship next term he couldn’t afford too many distractions. It was easy enough to say that football work need not interfere with studies, but football work had a way of doing that very thing. It wasn’t so much the time spent in actual practice or play that counted as it was the time a fellow gave to thinking about football. The sport had a way of seizing a fellow’s interest to the exclusion of all else. And toward the end of the season, as the Big Game loomed near, it was just about as easy for a football player to give serious attention to his studies as it was for a boy with a new red sled to display enthusiasm for the woodpile! Toby had learned this solely from observation, but he knew it was so.
Toby’s father was a boat-builder, and while the past season had seen a remarkable revival of the business, yet there were four of them in the family, and while business had increased so had living costs. It behooved Toby to get through the year as economically as possible, and a scholarship award of perhaps eighty dollars would make a big difference. He must do his level best to secure that. That decided, had he the right to give the necessary time to football? Especially as, after the Christmas recess, hockey would claim him. If it came to choosing between the two, he would choose hockey. Hockey was Toby’s game. He had proved himself in that. In football he might never become more than a second-rate player, or even a third. If he resolutely gave up football this minute and worked hard at his studies until Christmas, he wouldn’t have to worry about the time he gave to hockey. Hockey didn’t make the demands that football did, anyway. Well, then——
Toby frowned and thought, and made up his mind and unmade it several times, during the succeeding hour. Then Arnold came bustling in and what his final decision was Toby never knew. But when he awoke Sunday morning he discovered that his mind had attended to the matter by itself while he slept, and in the afternoon, returning from a walk with Arnold and Frank along the river, he excused himself and ran into the gymnasium and down to the locker-room. When he overtook his companions he carried an armful of football togs.
“What—what——” exclaimed Arnold.
“I’ve decided not to play football, after all,” explained Toby calmly, “so I thought I might as well clear out my locker to-day. There aren’t enough of them to go around, you know.”