The distance from Sohmer to the gym was only a matter of yards, and it wasn’t until the two reached the entrance of the latter building that they encountered any one. Then, or so Myron imagined, the three fellows who followed them through the big oak door looked curiously from Joe’s astounding attire to his own perfectly correct grey flannels. He was glad when the twilight of the corridor was reached, and all the way down the stairs to the locker-room below he was careful to avoid all suggestions of intimacy with Joe.
Football was still in the first rather chaotic phase. An unusually large number of candidates had reported this fall, and, while in theory it was a fine thing to have so much material to select from, in reality it increased the work to be done tremendously. On the second day of school one hundred and twelve boys of all sizes and ages and all degrees of inexperience were on hand, and coach, captain and trainer viewed the gathering helplessly. Today a handful of the original number had dropped out of their own accord, but there were still nearly a hundred left, and when Myron, having changed to his togs, followed the dribble of late arrivals to the field he wondered what on earth would be done with them all. Perhaps Coach Driscoll was wondering the same thing, for there was a perplexed frown on his face as he talked with Billy Goode and contemplatively trickled a football from one hand to the other.
Myron rather liked the looks of Mr. Driscoll. So far he had not even spoken to the coach and doubted if the latter so much as knew of his existence, but there was something in the coach’s face and voice and quick, decisive movements that told Myron that he knew his business. “Tod” Driscoll was about thirty, perhaps a year or two more, and had coached at Parkinson for several seasons. He was a Parkinson graduate, but his football reputation had been made at Yale. He was immensely popular with the students, although he made no effort to gain popularity and was the strictest kind of a disciplinarian. Today, while Myron, pausing at the edge of the crowded gridiron a few yards distant, viewed him and speculated about him, the coach showed rather less decision than usual, for twice he gave instructions, once to Billy and once to the manager, and each time changed his mind.
“We’ve got to find more instructors,” Myron heard him say a trifle impatiently. “How about you, Ken? Know enough football to take a bunch of those beginners over to the second team gridiron?”
“I’m afraid not, Coach,” answered Kenneth Farnsworth.
“You don’t need to know much. What do you say, Billy? Who is there? I’ve got most of the veterans at work already, and there isn’t one of them that shouldn’t be learning instead of teaching.”
Myron didn’t hear the trainer’s reply, for at that moment a well-built, light-haired, somewhat harassed youth of apparently nineteen strode up to the group. “Look here, Coach,” he began before he was well within talking distance, “what about the backs? We’ve got to have some get-together work before Saturday’s game, haven’t we? Cater says you’ve got him in charge of a kindergarten class, Brown’s sewed up the same way, Garrison hasn’t shown up——”
“I know, Cap. But what are we going to do with this raft of talent? Some one’s got to take hold of them, and I can’t take more than twenty. Cummins is about ready to go on strike——”
“It is a mess, isn’t it?” Captain Mellen turned and viewed the scene puzzledly. “The worst of it is that there probably aren’t a dozen in the whole lot worth troubling with.”