“You—you won’t!” gasped the other, surprise and dismay and anger struggling for supremacy. Rob shook his head again, gently and smilingly.
“Not likely,” he answered. “When I join your side-show, Hop, the snow will be twelve feet high in the Yard and the weather extraordinarily chilly. And now, I think, I’ll just drop in on Koehler and those others we mentioned. And I wouldn’t be surprised to find Prentiss somewhere around. Good-night, Hop.”
[CHAPTER XXII]
THE SCHOOL TAKES A HAND
The next afternoon, Saturday, foot-ball representatives of Riverport School played two contests. The First Team met Mifflin School and the Independents went up against Cardiff High. For the latter contest Duffield made a few changes in his line-up. Talcott replaced Chase at right tackle, Powers superseded Cook at right end and Pardee went in for Lyman at right half. Pardee was an improvement, and the same might be said of Powers, but Talcott didn’t fit and Chase was put back in the second half. The periods were only twenty minutes long, and, although Cardiff had wanted them twenty-five, they were long enough to prove the superiority of the Riverport Independents. Cardiff was plainly surprised, for she had come over expecting to pit herself against a team of very small calibre. She began the game with five substitutes, but they were soon replaced with regulars. In the first half the Independents had no difficulty in scoring twice and in the last period they crossed Cardiff’s goal-line once, the final score being 16 to 3, the visitors having made a very creditable goal from placement. Duffield relied on straight foot-ball; in fact, the team as yet knew little else; and all three touchdowns came as results of line plunging varied occasionally by an end run. Of the touchdowns Rob scored two and Shaler one. The School divided its attention between the two games, but what cheering was done was mostly for the Independents. The Cardiff game was over long before the School Team was through with Mifflin, or perhaps I should say before Mifflin was through with the School Team, and most of the Independents saw the last fifteen minutes of that game.
Hopkins’ players were plainly in the midst of a bad slump, for even in the first game of the year they had not played so listlessly or with so little gumption. Mifflin made them look very small before she was through with them, piling up twelve points in the first half and sixteen in the second. The spectators saw the contest come to an end with scant display of interest; the defeat was so overwhelming that censure would have been flat and unprofitable. Silence alone seemed appropriate. Rob and Evan were moving away from the field when the First Team members, having cheered Mifflin after a fashion, trotted by toward the gymnasium. Rob caught Hopkins’ eye as the latter passed and received a vindictive scowl. He smiled.
“I wonder,” he said to Evan, “by what process of reasoning Hop holds me responsible for to-day’s defeat.”
“Does he?” asked Evan, falling into step beside his chum.