“What are you doing? Fishing for compliments? Come on and quit your kidding! Do you suppose Burtis would have put you with the quarters if he hadn’t seen that you had the stuff in you?”
“But I haven’t! I can’t play quarter-back for a cent, Beech, honest! Besides, there’s Frick and Rawson and Stair——”
“Listen, Tucker, I know who we’ve got just as well as you do. Those fellows are all right, but not one of them has any better chance of copping the job than you have. And we want the best fellow to get it. So you come on back to-morrow, Tucker my lad, and be properly ashamed of yourself. And don’t let’s have any more talk about scholarships and things. If you can’t play a little football and keep your end up in classes you’re less of a man than I thought you were. And that’s that!”
“Well, I’ll see,” answered Toby dubiously. “It’s all well enough——”
“You’ll see nothing,” said Beech sternly. “You’ll be on the field to-morrow at three-fifteen dressed to play. By the way, where’d you get hold of that chap Tubbs?”
“Why, I just happened to run across him. He was having sort of a poor time of it and I thought if I could get him interested in something he might pull himself together.” Toby was rather apologetic. “He didn’t want to do it and I was afraid he wouldn’t stick it long.”
“How do you mean, wouldn’t stick it?”
“Why, he’s quit, hasn’t he? He told me Saturday he was going to.”
“He was out to-day all right. Shucks, he isn’t going to quit. He’s stringing you. He’s liking it well enough now, and unless I miss my guess he’s going to make a few of our bunch sit up and take notice. The boy’s a natural-born end! Well, see you to-morrow, old man. So long!”
George Tubb a “natural-born end”! Toby forgot for the moment the complication just introduced into his own affairs in surprise over Beech’s appraisal of Tubb. That the latter would make good on the gridiron Toby had never for an instant believed. He had only hoped that the dissatisfied youth would find in football a new and sufficient interest to reconcile him to the school and, perhaps, a means of making friends. Well, he was certainly quite as pleased as he was surprised! In view of what Beech had just told him, however, he wondered why Tubb had threatened only two days ago to quit; and, still wondering, he kept on to the third floor instead of stopping at the second and knocked at the door of Number 31.