“All the more reason then,” replied Joe calmly. “Keith isn’t!”
“All right,” said Myron, “you cheer for Keith. To my mind the best player in that brown bunch is Cater.”
“Yeah, he’s good, too,” owned Joe. “I call him a nice little quarter. Nice fellow, too, Cater. So’s Steve Kearns. Know him?”
“Playing full-back? No, only to nod to. I don’t think he’s as good a full-back as Williams, though.”
“Both of them will stand improving,” said Joe drily. “Gee, I wish Driscoll would let me in on this!”
But, as has been said, he didn’t, and when the game was over Joe and Myron trotted back to the gymnasium with a host of others equally unfortunate. After showers and a return to citizen’s clothing they took Zephaniah Q. Dobbins for a walk. Or, it would be more exact to say, a romp.
The Latin coaching ended the last of the next week, by which time Andrew Merriman declared Myron up with the class. Myron wasn’t so certain of it and would have continued the tutoring if Andrew hadn’t refused. “You’re discharged,” said Andrew. “You know about as much as Old Addie himself now, and a lot more than I. All you have got to do is study.”
“Is that all?” asked Myron ironically. “It isn’t anything if you say it quick, is it?”
But Andrew proved right about it, and Myron found that as much work applied to Latin as to other studies kept him on good terms with Old Addie.
There was one thorn in Myron’s side at this time, and its name was Charles Cummins. Cummins was a riddle to Myron. Ever since the time he had spent that unpleasant half-hour in Cummins’ awkward squad the freckle-faced, shock-haired giant had never let an opportunity pass to accost him. There was no harm in that, of course; the trouble was that Cummins always made himself so disagreeable! It seemed to Myron that the chap deliberately sought him out in order to rile him. And it wasn’t so much what Cummins said as the way he said it. It got so that Myron only had to see the other approaching to feel huffy. Long before Cummins got within speaking distance Myron had his back up, and Cummins, knowing it, seemed to take delight in it.