“None of your lip, my lad! Watch your step, now!”
This time the ball came straight and shoulder high, and Myron caught it, shifted it to the crook of his left arm and dived forward. “Splendidly done, old chap!” applauded Chas. “Quite professional. Any one can play full-back if he has a good centre like me to pass to him, though. Now, then, here we go again!”
Chas kept it up until he was red in the face from stooping and Myron was tired of it, and only stopped, as he said, because he had heard a suspicious ripping sound in the neighbourhood of his waist. “It’s all right,” he explained a trifle breathlessly, “to die for your school, but no one wants to bust his trousers for it!”
On the way back to the bench Myron said: “What did you mean in your note about Fortune, Cummins? I didn’t get that. Sorry I was out, by the way.”
“I meant that things were coming our way, old chap. Didn’t you observe what a mess of things Steve Kearns made Saturday?”
“Not especially. I guess I wasn’t watching Kearns much.”
“And you grooming for his place! What do you know about you? Well, poor old Steve balled up everything he tried. Every time he got the ball he lost a yard. If they’d turned him around he’d have won the game for us! Between you and me and the bucket there, Foster, you’ve got the chance of a life-time to land on all four feet right square behind the first team. All you’ve got to do is show horse-sense, old chap, and be willing to learn. By the way, you got off a couple of nice punts over there.”
“I don’t see, though, why I couldn’t have had a show at half,” said Myron dubiously. “I don’t know enough about playing full-back, Cummins. I may make an awful mess of it.”
“If you do,” was the grim reply, “I’ll knock the feathers off you. But you won’t. You mustn’t. Doggone it, son, this is your big chance! You’ve just got to make good! Remember there’s another year coming!”
“I’ll try, of course, Cummins, but——”