“Any English blood in you?” asked Leonard.
Yet on Monday it almost seemed that Johnny’s hopefulness was not without cause, for Leonard found himself treated with a new—well, deference is hardly the word: let us say respect, although even that word is scarcely the right one. Call it what you like, however, and the fact remains that the new order of things entailed much harder work than Leonard had done before. With less than two weeks remaining before the final contest of the season, Coach Cade appeared to be striving to present a team of worn-out and exhausted cripples for Kenly Hall’s amusement. Yet, probably because he had brought them along fairly slowly so far, the players proved capable of performing a lot of work and receiving a lot of punishment in that fortnight. The time had come to round off the corners, to smooth down the rough places, to acquire subtleties without forgetting fundamentals. There were new plays to learn, too, and, a little later, new signals. Perhaps Leonard worked no harder than any one else; perhaps, because he had more to learn, it just seemed harder. But he got on famously. There was no doubt about that. He was fast and mettlesome and used his head. By the last of the week he had been accepted by those in the know—and some who weren’t—as a certain performer against Kenly Hall. When he spoke of sore muscles or contused shins or strained ligaments Slim browbeat him shamefully.
“What of it?” Slim would demand fiercely. “Expect to play football without getting bruised a little? Don’t be a pill. Why, you’ve got Renneker and Stimson lying awake nights trying to think up some way of beating you! Here, let’s see your old leg. Where’s that bottle of arnica? Hold still, you silly ass! Sure, I knows it hurts, but you needn’t throw a fit about it!”
“Fit yourself!” Leonard would snap indignantly, being thoroughly weary and sore all over. “Look at the way you went on when you got a black eye that time!”
“It wasn’t the bruise I minded, it was simply the damage to my manly beauty. These sore places of yours won’t ever show, General, even if you play in a bathing-suit!”
Then, on Friday, Jimsy Carnochan returned from a brief visit to New London and took his pen in hand, thereby considerably “gumming up” the Alton Academy football situation.
To Jimsy’s credit be it said that he didn’t hide behind any such anonymity as “A Friend” or “Wellwisher” or “Fair Play.” No, sir, Jimsy came right out and signed the bottom of that chirographic bombshell plainly with his name, thus: “James Duffy Carnochan.” It was a bombshell, too, if for no other reason than that it exploded so unexpectedly. It was addressed to Coach Cade, and it reached that already harassed gentleman by the first mail delivery on Saturday morning. It ran as follows:
Mr. John Cade,
87 Academy street,
City.
Dear Sir: