“Dry up or get out!”
“It’ll be me if you want me,” responded Rob good-naturedly, “but I guess you can find some one a lot better. We want a manager, too. Once we’ve got going the manager will make some dates for us. It isn’t too late to get in, say, four or five games with other schools. There’ll be no favoritism—”
He was interrupted by loud and prolonged applause.
“And every fellow who comes out for the team will get a fair show. We’ll make the team up of the best players we can find, no matter whether they’re personally known to the captain or man—”
But Rob didn’t get any further, being drowned out by the howl of laughter which arose.
“We’ll have a coach, too. I know a fellow who will come up here for a month and be glad to do it and not charge a cent beyond his board. And he knows football, too, a whole lot more than any of the rest of us ever will know. I’ll tell you who he is when the time comes. We’ve been to see Doctor Farren and he says we can go ahead. And we’ve consulted Tom—I mean Mr. Osgood—and he thinks the idea is a good one. We can use the scrub gridiron for practice and when the School Team goes away to play we can use theirs. I don’t say we can turn out a finished team this fall, because it’s already the tenth of October, but we can have some mighty good sport and perhaps next year we’ll be able to give the School Team something to think about. Now, then, what do you say, fellows?”
The project took the meeting by storm and confusion reigned supreme. But the sense of the meeting was evident, and Rob shot a satisfied glance toward Evan and Malcolm as he edged back to his seat on the window-ledge. Joe Law demanded recognition and finally got it. Joe was indignant and declared that he had never before witnessed the appalling spectacle of a school deliberately deserting its foot-ball team. Joe waxed eloquent and a good many foot-ball fellows present applauded.
“What happened the other day?” he demanded. “Why, a lot of you chumps stood down there on the field and hooted us. That’s no way to do! What if we did get licked badly by Mountfort? That game wasn’t an important one. Why don’t you stand by us and help us find our pace and knock spots out of Adams? What good is it going to do to go and get up another team? What will the other schools think of us? They’ll think we’re a lot of—of—”
“Who wrote your speech, Law?” piped up a voice that sounded like Mr. George Washington Jell’s; “Hopkins or Prentiss?”