“Oh! No, sir, I’m not, but—but they’re a lot more expensive I guess, than they need be.”
“It doesn’t pay to buy cheap leather, my boy. Put on the other one and get used to them.”
“Yes, sir,” murmured Toby, flustered, trying to pick up his stick, accept the other glove from Beech and find words of thanks at the same moment, with the result that he fumbled stick, glove and speech! Beech chuckled, Mr. Loring smiled and Toby colored. “I—I’m most awfully much obliged,” the latter managed to enunciate at last. “I don’t know how to—to thank you, sir, and—”
“Never mind,” laughed the coach. “Actions speak louder than words, Tucker, and I should say that gratitude had simply overwhelmed you!”
Toby laughed too then and struggled into the second glove and smote them together and viewed them proudly, and Mr. Loring and Beech smiled understandingly at each other. After that, although Toby thought that he had utterly failed to meet the situation, the interrupted practice went on. To the amusement of the others, those new gloves quite upset Toby’s game and for a few minutes Beech scored goals almost as he liked. But that didn’t last and very soon the old struggle for mastery was on again in earnest and Mr. Loring, who had an engagement in the village at twelve and should have been on his way even then, enjoyed the contest so much that he stayed until Beech called a halt. Then he hurried off by the river path with the tails of his fur coat flapping ludicrously in the wind. Toby and Beech, treading the squeaky board-walk that led up the slope to the gymnasium, watched and chuckled. At least, Beech chuckled. Toby didn’t because nothing that Alfred Loring could do after that morning could ever seem ludicrous to him. He wondered if the coach had guessed that the reason he had no better gloves was because he hadn’t the money to buy them with, and concluded he had—and decided that he didn’t care. Mr. Loring was much too fine a gentleman to look down on a chap because he happened to be poor. Those gloves were not left in his locker in the gymnasium that day, but accompanied him into class room and commons, to be secretly felt of at intervals.
By that time Toby’s exchequer was slightly replenished and he decided that those gloves demanded a pair of leg-guards to go with them. He could buy the leg-guards if he used all his money except a few pennies and he determined to be reckless and get them. Not having Arnold to call on for advice and counsel, he sacrificed most of his dinner the next day, and hurried off to the village alone. As it turned out, Arnold’s advice wouldn’t have helped him a great deal, for there were but two styles of leg-guards to choose from at Fessenden’s, one cheap and unworthy the honor of being associated with those new gloves and the other expensive and wonderful. Toby unhesitatingly purchased a pair of the latter sort and counted out his money with a fine feeling of affluence. The only fly in his ointment was that he couldn’t put them on then and there and wear them home. Of course he could have done so, too, but he had a suspicion that the residents of Greenburg would stare. But he wore them that afternoon and gloried in the immaculate beauty of the white leather and felt uncomfortably conspicuous until he got interested in stopping the shots at goal and forgot them. They came up well above his knee and down over his ankle-bones, and there were no pesky leather straps punched with holes which were never in the right places. Instead, they were held in place by canvas strips which, once slipped through the clasps, stayed there immovably as long as you wanted them to and undid very easily. In those new white gloves and new white leg-guards Toby looked very fine that afternoon and managed to convey the impression that he was a real, sure-enough goal-tend! Perhaps Crowell was impressed, for he displayed more interest in Toby than he had since that first talk before Christmas recess. As usual, Toby played at the net in the second period of the practice game with the second, and, perhaps because he was trying to live up to his new togs, got away with a clean score, for not once did the second get the puck into the net. Mr. Loring smiled his satisfaction when Toby passed him on his way off the ice and said:
“Good work, Tucker. Keep it up.”
Toby went back to an hour’s study before supper feeling rather well pleased with himself, and had it not been for the falling-out with Arnold would have been a very happy youth that evening. As it was, however, even success on the rink couldn’t make him altogether content. He missed Arnold’s companionship horribly. What was the use of making a success of hockey if there was no one to talk it over with? He tried to think of some chap who could take Arnold’s place, but there didn’t seem to be any. He was friendly with quite a number of fellows now, but none of them were intimates. Grover Beech would talk hockey with him by the hour, but his interest paled the moment another subject was introduced. No, Toby could think of no one who would care to listen to his confidences. He got pretty lonely at times about now.
When he and Arnold met, Toby’s rather wistful glances went unseen or, being seen, met no response. Arnold always looked over him or past him, coldly and unforgivingly. There were times when Toby was tempted to humble himself, to offer any sort of apology or atonement in return for a re-establishment of their old friendship, but always at the last moment pride or embarrassment intervened. Subsequent to such periods of weakness Toby went to the opposite extreme and sullenly vowed that he would never have anything more to do with Arnold; no, sir, not even if Arnold begged him on his knees!
Arnold appeared strangely morose and crabbed those days. At table he was short-tempered and often uncivil. He and Gladwin almost came to blows one evening over a discussion of some perfectly trivial subject, and it finally got so that the others carefully left him alone. All, that is to say, except Homer Wilkins. Arnold’s perversities had no effect on Homer. If Arnold was cross, Homer merely assured him earnestly and good-temperedly that he hoped he would choke.