“Say, Tom, how do you get that way?” asked Arnold, who was struggling into a clean collar. “The team’s all right, old dear, but we haven’t won the Broadwood game quite yet. To listen to you a fellow would think we’d just hung the ball in the Trophy Room!”
Tom laughed good-naturedly. “Well, I’ve picked out a place for it, Arn! Oh, we’ll have our little setbacks and we’ll lose a game or two one way or another, but that isn’t troubling me any. Why——”
“All right, but don’t talk like that so the fellows can hear you,” protested Arnold, more than half serious. “The worst thing that can happen to a team is for it to get the happy, confident feeling. Just as soon as it does it gets a silly grin on its face—or faces, rather—and dies in its tracks. I’d like it better if you’d cultivate a fine grouch, Tom.”
“Maybe I shall later, but you can’t make me grouchy to-night. I tell you, Arn, we showed what we had to-day. Take the team as it played this afternoon and teach it to work together and you’ve got a real machine, son. And Broadwood’ll know it some day!”
“I know. We have got some good players, and that’s no dream, but just at present it’s too much of an all-star aggregation to make a hit with me. There’s a heap of work ahead of us, old dear, before we get to be a real football team, and don’t you forget that for a little minute!”
“Oh, you’re a regular Calamity Jane,” jeered Tom. “Come on, or we’ll be late. Where’s Tucker? Isn’t he coming?”
“Yes, he will be here in a minute, I guess. And Frank’s going, too.”
“Lamson?” Tom’s brow clouded for an instant. “Say, Arn, he made a nifty touchdown to-day, didn’t he?”
“I thought so. But you needn’t cry about it.”
“I’m not. I was only wondering—You know, to my mind, Morris Roover’s the right chap there, Arn. Now suppose Lamson keeps on as he did this afternoon, eh?”