Guarding His Goal

by Ralph Henry Barbour

That Arnold had said nothing to Frank of Toby’s accusation was at once evident, for Frank hailed the younger boy almost cordially. “Great stuff, Toby!” he said. “You and I are going to have a real race, eh? By ginger, old scout, I didn’t know you had it in you!” The accompanying laugh suggested, however, that he was not seriously disturbed. Toby colored, momentarily embarrassed. The last thing he wanted from Frank was congratulation!

“Thanks,” he said stiffly. “Glad you like it.”

“Well, don’t get grouchy about it!” exclaimed Frank. “Any one would think I’d insulted you. Go to the dickens, will you?”

Toby passed him without response, trying hard to look haughty and dignified. That he wasn’t particularly successful in his effort was suggested by Frank’s amused laugh behind him. Later, on his way to the showers, Toby encountered Arnold. It seemed, he thought as he pulled the curtain across and turned the cold water on with more than usual disregard of results, that he was always running into Arn! After he had recovered from the first breath-taking shock of the shower he grumbled: “And he looks like he thought I was a worm, too, confound him! Any one would suppose that it was my fault! I had a perfect right to tell the truth about Frank. He did steal that money from me, and Arn’s saying he didn’t doesn’t alter the fact a bit. Maybe when he finds that Frank isn’t the fine hero he thinks he is he’ll come off his high horse. But he needn’t think I’m going to crawl, for I’m not. If he waits for me to apologize he will wait a mighty long while!”

Coach Loring came to him while he was dressing. “Beech is going to practice with you in the morning, Tucker,” he said. “At eleven. He will tell you what days he’s free. Let me know when he can’t be there and I’ll arrange with some one else—or do it myself. I noticed you used your body more to-day in stopping shots. It’s the best plan. Keep it up, Tucker.”

But in spite of all this encouragement Toby wasn’t really happy that evening. Supper had been a trying affair. Of course neither he nor Arnold had even so much as glanced at each other, much less spoken, and he was conscious all during the meal of the amused or inquiring glances of the other occupants of Table 14. He wondered whether he could get himself moved to another table, but abandoned the idea the next moment. He had done nothing and wasn’t going to run away as though he had. If Arnold didn’t like eating with him, why, let Arnold move. He put in an hour of study and then pressed Will Curran’s trousers, and a suit belonging to another boy, and tried very hard to concoct a rhymed reply to Curran’s missive. But rhyming was not Toby’s forte and he gave it up finally and climbed into bed to lie awake a long while in the darkness, thinking rather unhappy thoughts about life.

Grover Beech was awaiting him at the rink the next morning at a few minutes past eleven and, after they had shooed a half-dozen preparatory class boys from the ice, they set to work. Toby liked the long and lank second team captain and his respect for the latter’s skating and shooting prowess increased remarkably during that fifty minutes of work.

“I don’t know just what the silly idea is,” Beech remarked as he dropped the puck and circled back toward the middle of the rink with it, “but here goes, Tucker!” Beech tore down toward goal, zig-zagging, playing the puck first on one side and then on the other, dug his skates when a few yards away, swept past and, at the last moment, flicked the disk cunningly past Toby’s skates. Toby fished it out of the net ruefully, and Beech laughed.

“Keep your eyes open, Tucker!” he called, skating backward and dragging the puck in the crook of his blade. “Loring says he wants you to have practice, son, and I mean to give it to you. So watch your eye, boy!”