“And your hunches are generally right,” mused Peters. “Any second-string fellow that looks as if he was being held back? A clever back-field man, for instance?”
“I haven’t found any. No, I think it’s a goal-kicker, or maybe they’ve got a new scoring play that they haven’t shown. Well, I’m only guessing. We’ll know better a week from Saturday. Now let’s do some planning on the week from now to Thursday. We’ve got to buckle down and find a way of getting some punch into those split-plays. Or else drop them. What’s your idea, Cap?”
Whereupon the meeting became very technical and abstruse.
[CHAPTER XVIII]
PUBLICITY
Mr. Bates’ reply to Dick’s letter was contained in his regular weekly epistle and was decidedly non-committal. He appeared to accept Dick’s statements as to the latter’s studiousness and progress but made little comment. Only, a mail later than the letter, came two copies of the Leonardville daily, each with a paragraph circled in red ink. Seeing them, Dick sighed and shook his head even before he read them. Thursday’s paper held the following under the caption “High School Jottings”:
“Richard C. Bates, for two years one of High School’s most popular students, is certainly making good at his new Alma Mater, Parkinson School, which he entered last September. Dick went out for the Parkinson Football Team and proceeded to show them how the position of quarter-back should be played. Now he is first substitute, we learn, and the season isn’t over yet. Dick’s loss was a severe blow to the High School Team, but his old friends are surely proud of his success and are rooting hard for him.”
Dick shuddered over that and took up the second paper. “Leonardville is Proud of Him,” he read. “Richard Corliss Bates, the younger son of our prominent citizen and successful merchant, Mr. Henry L. Bates, of Euclid Boulevard, is a fine example of the coming citizens of Leonardville. Young Bates is well and favourably known to a wide circle of friends in this city who will be pleased to learn of his success in the various branches of his career at Parkinson School, Warne, Mass., of which famous institution of learning he became a student in September last. While attending the local High School Richard Bates was unusually popular, both for his personal traits and for the brilliancy displayed by him in athletics. As a football player he was easily supreme in this part of the State and his prowess was recognised widely. A number of schools and colleges sought his services but young Bates chose the school which his brother, Stuart Bates, now of Philadelphia, attended. There, in the short space of two months, Richard has already made his presence felt and is in a fair way to attain renown both for scholastic attainments and athletic supremacy. He entered into competition at the beginning of the school year for the position of quarter-back on the School Football Team, an honor for which there were dozens of contenders, and now holds the place of first substitute, with every indication of becoming the regular incumbent of the position before the football season ends. He has also recently been elected to membership in one of the school’s most exclusive organizations, the Banjo and Mandolin Club, to which, because of a rare musical talent, he will doubtless prove a valuable addition. In his classes Richard stands high. There is, we understand, talk amongst his friends in the High School of organising a party to go to Warne on the occasion of the Parkinson-Kenwood football game, which is held the Saturday before Thanksgiving, to see him play and to do honour to one who is so pleasingly upholding the traditions of Leonardville young manhood. His career will be watched with sympathetic interest by a host of well-wishers in our fair city.”
Having completed the reading of that, Dick not only shuddered again but groaned loudly, so loudly that Stanley, at the table, looked up from his studies and viewed him with alarm.