Hitting the line

by Ralph Henry Barbour

Jimmy and Dud had taken Leon up with enthusiasm. Jimmy had fallen victim to Leon’s skill in that first game of tennis, and Jimmy had a worshipful admiration for anyone who could play good tennis. Later Jimmy suspected that Leon had purposely let him down easy on that occasion, since in subsequent encounters Leon had, to use Jimmy’s expressive description, “simply wiped up the blooming court with him.” Within a few days Jimmy and Dud and Leon and Monty had established a four-cornered friendship that bade fair to last, unless, as sometimes seemed possible, they fell out over the question of school societies. Jimmy was a member of the Literary and Dud of the Forum, and each sought to get Monty and Leon pledged for his own favorite. There were some rare arguments in Number 14 Lothrop, with Monty and Leon playing the rôle of audience. When discussion waxed too warm it was Monty’s way to announce that, for his part, when it became necessary to decide between the merits of the two societies he meant to toss up a coin! In the end, which wasn’t until the next term, the matter was settled in quite another fashion, but that doesn’t enter into this story.

Leeds High School was defeated, 39 to 0, the next Saturday, by which time Grafton had found herself to some extent. Monty got into that game for a very few moments toward the end, and perhaps because by that time the Leeds line was largely a substitute affair, did well enough at left guard. Both the Grafton High and Leeds High contests were looked on as merely practice games, and the first real encounter was that with St. Philip’s School, a week later. In preparation for that event, the first squad was started in on the development of an attack and Mr. Crowley rounded up his second team and began to put it through its paces. Rather to his surprise, Monty was neither drafted to the second nor banished from the first, but continued to adorn the bench during the scrimmages, sometimes being called on to substitute at one side or the other of Ned Musgrave or Brewster Longley, first and second choice centers. In those days the haughty Starling Meyer, or Star, as he was generally called, usually kept him company. Star, however, treated Monty with silent contempt, something that bothered Monty not at all. Star was trying for a back field position and was said to have designs on Ordway’s job at right half. Sometimes Monty surprised Star looking at him with a puzzled expression as though wondering where innocence left off and guile began. On such occasions Monty always smiled expansively and Star removed his gaze with much dignity.

But before the Leeds game arrived Leon had won honor and renown by capturing the Fall Tennis Tournament with ease. In the final match he won from Ainsworth, holder of the title, 6–1 6–3, 5–7, 6–4, and had shown a brand of tennis that was nothing short of a revelation at Grafton. That Leon would succeed to the Tennis Team captaincy in the spring was a foregone conclusion. The Campus devoted quite a half column to him in the November issue and predicted a decisive victory over Mount Morris next May. In such manner Leon became almost overnight a person of importance at Grafton, and especially amongst a fairly large tennis element. The result was that he viewed the fate which had exiled him to the cold and inhospitable north much more kindly and no longer seized every opportunity, as had been his custom, to compare New England unfavorably to his beloved south. Leon had made a place for himself, in short, and was fitting nicely into it.

Monty was still jostling around on the fringe of things, trying hard to convince himself that he “belonged,” and not succeeding. Two things were worrying him about then. He was having difficulty with both German and English and was not getting on at all smoothly with his roommate. He told himself that whether Alvin Standart liked him or whether he liked Alvin were matters too small to bother about, but nevertheless rooming with a chap who spent all his time nagging or glowering was not pleasant. Monty saw as little of Alvin as he could manage, but it wasn’t possible to avoid him entirely. Alvin, it seemed, was capable of nursing a grouch for ever and ever, and Monty had the feeling that the tow-headed youth was watching and waiting for an opportunity to revenge himself for the loss of that forty cents worth of witch hazel. Sometimes Monty wished he had replaced the precious fluid as Alvin had demanded. At the time the latter’s peevishness had seemed too childish to merit serious attention, and Monty had refused recompense, not from stinginess, but, as he put it to himself, to teach Alvin the virtue of generosity. Meanwhile Alvin had himself replenished the bottle at least once. Monty sometimes thought the boy bathed in it, for, as near as he could determine, Alvin seldom bathed in that more usual element, water. It was his dislike of water, and soap as well, that brought about the first physical encounter between the occupants of Number F.

One morning in the second week in October Alvin was in the process of performing his usual style of morning toilet, that process consisting of dabbing a moist washcloth over his eyes, nose and chin, and rubbing a toothbrush very sketchily across his teeth. Monty had witnessed like performances many times without protest, but this morning he lost patience.

“Don’t you ever wash yourself, Standart?” he asked contemptuously.

“What am I doing?” asked Standart, peering scowlingly over the folds of his towel.

“Search me! It’s what I’d call a lick and a promise, though. Why don’t you pour another spoonful of water into the bowl and use the soap and go after the dirt? Honest, Standart, I couldn’t tell from looking at the back of your neck whether you were a blonde or a brunette!”

“Oh, dry up! I wash myself as clean as you do,” muttered the other. “You think the more water you splash around the room the cleaner you are. And my neck isn’t dirty, either. You mind your own business, you—you cowboy!”

“It’s my business if I have to live with you, hombre,” replied Monty. “Go ahead now. Just try it once. It won’t hurt you. You might grow to like it.”