Chas winked and frowned. “When he sprung that on me, Dobbins, I had my doubts. But I said the right thing. I said, ‘Go to it, my boy, and good luck to you!’ I’m glad I did. We surely need more full-backs than we’ve got, and I believe Foster’s going to be a good one. Well, I’m off. By the way, Dobbins, you played a pretty game Saturday. I’ll have to watch my step or you’ll have me on the bench. Good night!”
[CHAPTER XIX]
DOCTOR LANE INTERVENES
Chas Cummins proved a good prophet. On the following day Myron slipped into a niche in the first team, one of many hopeful, hard-working youths known as “first team subs.” For a few days, indeed, until after the Phillipsburg game, he was dazed by the sudden leap from obscurity to conspicuity, from what he termed neglect to what was extremely like solicitude. Not that his arrival at the field for practice was the occasion for shouts of acclaim and a fanfare of trumpets, for those at the helm did not show their interest in promising candidates in any such manner, but at last he was quite certain that coach and captain, managers and trainer, were aware of his existence. There were times when he heartily wished that they knew less of it. Some one was forever at his elbow, criticising, explaining, exhorting. Coach Driscoll and Ned Garrison oversaw his punting practice, Snow lugged him to remote corners of the playfield to make him catch passes, Katie drilled him in signals, every one, it seemed to Myron, was having a finger in his pie. And when he was not being privately coached, as it were, he was legging it around the gridiron with the substitutes or tumbling about the dummy pit with a bundle of stuffed and dirty canvas clasped to his bosom. Those were busy, confusing days. And yet no one outside the football “inner ring” appeared to be aware of the fact that a new light had arisen in the Parkinson firmament. Not unnaturally, perhaps, Myron looked for signs of interest, even of awe, from his acquaintances, but he found none. At table in dining hall Eldredge still glowered at him, Rogers cringed and the pestiferous Tinkham poked sly fun. Only Joe and Andrew and Chas, among his friends, showed him honour; and Joe as a strewer of blossoms in his path was not an overwhelming success. Joe seemed to think that his chum’s leap to incipient fame was pleasing but not remarkable, while Myron was absolutely certain that it was stupendous and unparalleled in the annals of preparatory school football. When you are watched and guided as Myron was by those in command you are likely to think that. He wondered whether Joe was not just a little bit envious. Of course, Joe’s position was quite as assured as his own, but Joe had not engaged the time and attention and solicitude of the entire coaching force. He hoped Joe wasn’t going to be disagreeable about it.
Phillipsburg came and went, defeated easily enough, 12 points to 3, and Warne High School followed a week later. High School always put up a good fight against Parkinson, and she made no exception this year. Coach Driscoll used many substitutes that afternoon and so High School found her work easier. Myron had his baptism by fire in the second period and lasted until the end of the third. He was taken out then because High School had tied the score and it was necessary to add another touchdown or field-goal to the home team’s side of the ledger. So Kearns, who was still the most dependable full-back in sight, took Myron’s place. Kearns gained and lost in his usual way, and had no great part in the securing of the third Parkinson score. Katie was mainly responsible for that, for he sneaked away from the opponent’s thirty-two yards and landed the ball on her eight, from whence it was carried over on the fourth down by Brounker. That made the figures 20 to 14, and there they remained for the rest of the contest.
Myron was huffy about being removed and every one who spoke to him discovered the fact. Of course, he was huffy in a perfectly gentlemanly way. He didn’t scold and he didn’t sneer, but he indulged in irony and intimated that if football affairs continued to be managed as they had been that afternoon he would refuse to be held responsible if the season ended in defeat. Oddly enough, no one appeared panic-stricken at the veiled threat. Joe grinned, until Myron looked haughty and insulted, and then became grave and spoke his mind. He had an annoying way of doing that, to Myron’s way of thinking.
“Kiddo,” said Joe, on this occasion, “if I was you I’d let Driscoll and Mellen run things their own way. Maybe their way don’t always look good to you, but you aren’t in possession of all the—the facts, so to speak. When they put in Kearns today they had a reason, believe me, Brother. You attend to your knitting and let theirs alone. If they drop a stitch, it’s their funeral, not yours. You’ve got just about all you can do to beat Kearns and Williams for full-back’s position——”
“I’m ahead of Williams right now,” said Myron with asperity.
“All right, kiddo; you stay there. Don’t get highfaluting and swell-headed. Just as soon as you do you’ll quit playing your best and Williams’ll slip past you. Take an old man’s advice, Brother.”