Coles Wistar’s room in Lykes, which he shared with Ted Ball, First Team quarter-back, looked full to capacity when Chick and Bert arrived there that Monday evening. Once inside, however, accommodations of a sort could be discerned, and Chick crowded onto a bed and Bert squeezed in between Anstruther and Tommy Parish on the window-seat. Coles Wistar was Football Manager, and it was largely a football crowd which was present. There were George Anstruther, familiarly “Judge,” and Billy Pillsbury, assistant managers, Ted Ball, Hank Howard, Pete Ness, Jim Galvin and Nip Storer, all of the Team. Tommy Parish was present because Pill had brought him and no one had yet thrown him out. Homer Johnson, who roomed with Captain Lowe, had brought Jonas’s regrets and remained to partake of hospitality. These, with the host, Chick and Bert, formed the party, a round dozen in all.
Lykes Hall, reserved for the Senior Class Students, held fewer rooms than the other dormitories, but, fortunately for Coles’ party, they were larger than the rooms in Haylow or Upton or Borden, the latter the Freshman domicile. Number 5 was well-furnished and attractive, for Coles had excellent taste in such matters. There was a refreshing lack of school and college pennants on the walls, this style of decoration being represented by a single Alton banner hung above the double windows. There were a good many pictures, most of them etchings, of which Coles was a modest collector, a few framed photographs and one lone trophy on the walls. The latter, placed above a closet door, was a wooden panel some three feet long with a black, sanded background against which gilt letters startlingly announced “EASTBOUND TRAINS.” It was a memento of Ted Ball’s unregenerate freshman days, and although it had always grated against Coles’ artistic sensibilities he had never been able to persuade Ted to remove it. Ted acknowledged that it might be a jarring note in the decorative scheme, but he had annexed that trophy under extremely difficult circumstances, braving arrest and, possibly, penal servitude, and, although nowadays self-condemnatory in his explanation of its presence here, he was secretly very proud of it. Ted was a rather stocky, bright-eyed chap of eighteen, fun-loving and extremely popular at Alton. He was equally brilliant at studies and as a quarter-back, a shining example to his team-mates which, unfortunately, not many emulated.
The particular host of the evening, Coles Wistar, was unlike his room-mate in many ways. Coles was tall, with a thin face and lightish hair, wore glasses and looked intellectual. He had spent a year at a junior preparatory school near Boston before coming to Alton and had managed to acquire the broad A and a Bostonese accent. You could always make a hit with Coles by inferring that he came from the Hub, although as matter of fact, he lived in a small village in New Hampshire. In spite of one or two trifling affectations he was no fool and was an unusually capable manager. Conversation, interrupted by the arrival of Chick and Bert, gathered momentum again. Tommy Parish, it appeared, had, in the terse phraseology of Hank Howard, been “shooting off his mouth again.”
“Says the Team’s the rottenest he’s seen since he came here,” explained Hank to Chick. “The silly ass doesn’t know a thing about football, anyway, but you’d think, to hear him go on—”
“Pshaw,” began Chick, “why pay attention to that coot? He just likes to hear himself—” But Tommy, even in the midst of Coles’ scathing rejoinder, overheard and challenged Hank’s assertion.
“All wrong, Howard. I know a heap more about football than most of you guys who play it, or try to. Why wouldn’t I? All you fellows learn is how to look after your own positions. You’re on the inside looking cross-eyes at your own jobs. I’m on the outside looking in at the whole works. Now let me—”
“Muzzle him, somebody,” said Nip Storer.
“Tie a can to him,” advised Jim Galvin.
“Let the silly ass talk,” laughed Ted Ball. “Go on and tell ’em, Tommy.”