"You dare say you will! Don't you feel sure you will? Because I've got to tell you, Donald, that this is a plaguy bad time to get laid off, son. If you're not a regular little Bright Eyes by Monday Robey'll can you as sure as shooting!"
"I wouldn't much care if he did," muttered Don.
"You wouldn't much—— Say, are you crazy?" Tim stopped short on the walk and viewed his chum in amazement. "Is it your brain that's gone back on you? Don't you want to play against Claflin?"
"I suppose so. Yes, of course I do, but——"
"Then don't talk like a piece of cheese! You'll come with me to the doctor after supper if I have to drag you there by one heel!"
And so go he did, and the doctor looked at his tongue and felt his pulse and "pawed him over," as Don put it, and ended by patting him on the back and accepting a nice bright half-dollar—half-price to Academy students—in exchange for a prescription.
"You're a little nervous," said the doctor. "Thinking too much about that football game, I guess. Don't do it. Put it out of your mind. Take that medicine every two hours according to directions on the bottle and you'll be all right, my boy."
Don thanked him, slipped the prescription in a pocket and headed for school. But Tim grabbed him and faced him about. "You don't swallow the prescription, Donald," he said. "You take it to a druggist and he gives you something in a bottle. That's what you swallow, the stuff in the bottle. I'm not saying that it mightn't do you just as much good to eat the paper, but we'd better play by the rules. So come on, you lunk-head."
"Of course you did," agreed the other sarcastically.
"And, look here, if anyone asks
you your name, it's Donald Croft Gilbert. Think you can remember that? Donald Croft——"