“Well, I’m beginning to sour on that handsome guy as a tackle. Looks to me like he was touched with frost!”
At about the same time that Saturday evening Rus Emerson was seated in Coach Cade’s front room in the old white house opposite the school gate on Academy street. Johnny sat at one side of a big mahogany table and Rus at the other, and each was slumped well down on his spine as if he had put in a hard day’s work. The soft light of the lamp left their faces in shadow. The coach was speaking. “Who makes up these All-Scholastic Football Teams, Cap?” he inquired.
“The papers, I guess. That is, the sports editors.”
“Reckon they make mistakes now and then?”
“I wouldn’t wonder.” Rus smiled gently in the shadow.
“H’m.” There was silence a moment. Then: “He certainly looks good,” continued the coach almost wistfully. “I don’t know that I ever saw a chap who came nearer to looking the part of a clever, hard-fighting lineman. Why, just on appearances you’d pick him out of a crowd and shake hands with yourself.”
“He certainly does look the part,” agreed Rus. “And maybe he will find his pace after a bit.”
“Maybe.” But Johnny’s tone was dubious. “He won’t find it unless he looks for it, though, and it doesn’t seem to me that he’s taking the trouble to look.” The coach laughed softly, ruefully. “The funny thing is, Cap, that he’s got me bluffed. I know mighty well that he needs jacking up, but every time I get ready to ask him if he won’t kindly come alive and take an interest in things he turns that calmly superior gaze on me and I haven’t the courage. Why, drat his handsome hide, Cap, he looks like he invented football! Speaking harshly to him would be like—like knocking off the President’s hat with a snowball!”
Rus chuckled. “He’s got me like that, too. I want to apologize every time I open my mouth to him. Do you know, I’m beginning to wonder whether it wouldn’t be a good plan to switch him over to the subs for a few days. It might be good medicine.”
“Ye-es, it might. We’ll see how he comes on the first of the week, though. Besides, Cap, who’s going to tell him he’s out of the line-up?” laughed Johnny. “Me, I’d have to write him a letter or send him a telegram!”