“Ask Mr. Lyle. I suppose I’ll get a show sometime, though. I sure want to. They say Brown and Young’s are regular bearcats! What time is it getting to be? I’m as hungry as the dickens. Let’s go!”
The Second Team had no practice Saturday, which, for some of its members, was fortunate, since the First had managed to deal very harshly with them during the brief period of yesterday’s game. Toby, although he had nothing to show in the way of scars, was tired and lame when he crawled out of bed in the morning, and not until he had shivered under a shower-bath, groaningly rubbed himself pink and done two minutes of setting-up exercises in front of an open window which admitted the frostly tingle of the October morning did the usual feeling of well-being return. After that he was able to reach chapel without protests from lame muscles and, later, do full justice to a breakfast of cereal, eggs, toast, stewed fruit, and milk.
Fortunately, on Saturday mornings recitations were few, for, save during a brief midwinter period when outdoor sports were at a standstill, preoccupation was always noticeable on the part of the student body on that day of the week. Such a condition of mind was especially evident this forenoon, due, probably, to the fact that Yardley’s opponent in the afternoon had been heralded as a strong team with a proclivity for “roughing it.” Yardley, as much as any school and perhaps more than many, held for clean playing, but there was enough of the “Old Adam” there to make a bit of scrapping interesting. Its attitude was well explained by a remark made by Will Curran, the First Team quarter, in front of Oxford between recitations.
“If they’re mean players we’ll lick them,” said Curran. “I never saw a team yet who could play dirty ball and win as long as the other fellow played clean. But my guess is that they won’t play dirty. That sort of stuff doesn’t go here, and I think they know it. If they don’t know it they’ll mighty soon find it out! They’ll play clean if we have to slug ’em to make ’em!”
Which statement, although made in all sincerity and with a perfectly sober countenance, met with a ripple of laughter from his hearers. “That’s the idea, Will!” approved Frank Lamson. “We’ll have peace if we have to fight for it!”
Brown and Young’s School was a new institution and a large one. You saw its half-page advertisements in the magazines every month. Although a city school, it emphasized athletics and had a field that any university might have been proud of, with a stadium that was an architectural triumph. There were those who opined that Brown and Young’s graduates were likely to be better grounded in football, baseball and track athletics than in scholarly studies, but possibly such persons were disgruntled by a Brown and Young’s defeat. For Brown and Young’s took athletics seriously and pursued victory on diamond, gridiron or rink most strenuously. And, it must be acknowledged, Brown and Young’s had won many laurels. Yardley had met her last spring in baseball, but this was the first gridiron contest between the two. On the diamonds Brown and Young’s had proved noisy, argumentative and a trifle rough in the pinches, and had accepted a 3 to 2 defeat not very graciously, but she had not been guilty of unfair tactics. Perhaps, as Tom Fanning said, she liked to be thought a bit “tough” in the hope that her adversaries would either be afraid or try to beat her at toughness and get caught doing it. In any event, Yardley received a strict warning from Coach Lyle before the game.
“Any fellow who tries dirty work will come out,” he declared. “If the officials don’t put him off, I will. Just remember that. If Brown and Young’s don’t play clean it’s up to the officials. We’ve heard that these fellows are a ‘tough bunch,’ a win-at-any-cost team, but you can’t believe everything you hear. So don’t go into the game looking for trouble. Maybe it isn’t there. If they should try the rough-stuff, your captain will call the officials’ attention to it. Just you keep your hands and your temper down and your heads up. Play as hard as you know how, fellows, but play fair.”
It was an ideal football day, crisp and sunny, with almost no wind. Frost had left the field a bit soft but not sufficiently so to affect any one’s game. Greenburg turned out a good audience, which, added to the Yardley rooters and a half-hundred Brown and Young’s followers, nearly filled the stands by three o’clock. Toby had Sid Creel and Grover Beech for companions, and, reaching the field early, they got first row seats directly behind the Yardley bench. Brown and Young’s came on first, a capable-looking squad of thirty or so, accompanied by a regular retinue of noncombatants; a head coach and an assistant coach, a couple of managers, a trainer, an assistant trainer and two rubbers.
“Guess the Principal must be ill,” said Beech dryly. “I don’t see him anywhere.”
“Maybe he’s one of the cheer leaders,” suggested Sid. “Those are sure some gaudy togs of theirs!”