“The game’s bad enough, Tommy, without any help from you,” answered Homer coldly.
“Oh, no, Homer, you’re wrong,” responded Tommy affably. “Nothing’s so bad it can’t be helped. Constructive criticism, Homer, old timer, is never inopportune, never mal venu.” Tommy delighted in French phrases which he pronounced with a fine New England accent. He knew just how far he could go with Homer Johnson without getting into trouble, and it is doubtful if he would have risked that “old timer” had they not been separated by a row of seats and their occupants. Homer was a senior and Tommy still no more than a sophomore, although others who had been his classmates last year were now juniors. Homer frowned but contented himself with “Shut up, Tommy!” delivered sharply. Tommy smiled placidly and slowly returned his gaze to the peanut bag.
“Crazy kid,” commented Freeman Naughton, grinning as soon as Tommy’s head was turned away. “I’ve wanted to kill him fifty times since I’ve been here!”
“He’d have been dead long ago if I’d yielded to my desire,” chuckled Homer. “Tommy bears a charmed life, I guess. Gets away with stuff that would get another fellow kicked from here to State street. Did you hear what he got off on Jonas the other day? He and another fellow were passing in front of Upton and the ball got away from him just as Jonas came along and Tommy yelled, ‘Thank you, Jonas!’ Well, you know the way Jonas moves when he isn’t playing football. He ambled along and picked up the ball and looked at it and finally tossed it back, and Tommy yelled, ‘Say, listen! I want to ask you something! Is your name Jonas Lowe or is it Jonah Slow?’ I guess Jonas wanted to slaughter him, but he let him live.”
Naughton—he went by the name of “Naughty,” naturally enough—chuckled. “The cheekiest thing he ever did, though, was in our freshman year. I guess I told you.”
“About Kincaid?”
“Yes. Kincaid had wandered off the lesson, the way he does, and was telling the class something he’d seen in Rome or some place; something about some ruins; and Tommy pipes up with: ‘Mr. Kincaid, haven’t those ruins been there a long time?’ ‘Why, yes, Parish,’ says Kincaid, ‘some thousands of years.’ ‘Then,’ says Tommy sweetly, ‘maybe they’ll keep, sir, if we go on with the lesson.’”
The quarter came to an end with the score still 6 to 3, the teams changed goals and Mr. Cade, the coach, familiarly known as Johnny, hustled a set of bedraggled substitutes from the bench and sent them trotting in to report. Jake, the trainer, wrapped the deposed ones in dry blankets and circulated an already soiled towel about on which they wiped their wet faces. The game started off on its final period with a new backfield, save for Galvin, at full, and two new linemen. Southport introduced two fresh ends, but made no other changes. Southport made a determined drive for the Alton goal and got the pigskin as far as the twenty-eight yards, where, after two attempts at the Gray-and-Gold’s line had yielded scant returns, and a short forward-pass had gone wrong, her left half dropped back and tried to duplicate his feat of the first quarter. But this time he was hurried and the ball slanted off to the left and passed well beyond the goal post. Storer punted on second down and Southport got the pigskin again on Alton’s forty-six. Once more she tried desperately to reach a point from which to score by kicking. A wide sweep gained but two yards and a smash straight at the center of the line was good for as many more. Then, however, a puzzling double pass sent a back inside Dozier, at left tackle, and the runner dodged and twirled to the thirty-three before he was nailed by Ball, the Alton quarter-back.
Again Southport tried the ends, first one and then the other, and the ball went out of bounds on the second play. With about twenty-eight to go on a third down and the ball well to the side of the gridiron, a place-kick looked unpromising, and when the visitor set the stage for it Alton was incredulous. Warnings of a forward-pass were cried, but when the ball went back it sped straight to the kneeling quarter and was set to the ground. The kicker was deliberate and Chick Burton, slipping past the defense, almost blocked the ball, but it passed him safely, sailed up and over the cross-bar and added another three points to Southport’s score and tied the game.
Alton didn’t have a chance to better her figures during the few minutes that remained. Southport, evidently as pleased with results as if she had won, set herself on the defensive and held the enemy safely away from her goal. The stand was almost empty by the time the last whistle blew. In the front row of seats, however, Tommy Parish still huddled, arising at last with a sigh of repletion and a deluge of peanut shells to the ground. Then, sinking his neck into the collar of his sweater and his moist hands into the pockets of his baggy breeches, he turned from the scene of conflict and made his way back across the soggy field toward Upton Hall. Ahead, the tired players plodded along by twos and threes, blankets trailing, subdued and disgruntled. Toward the end of the procession Coach Cade’s short, thick-set figure walked beside that of Captain Lowe. Jonas was almost six feet tall and correspondingly broad, and walked with a lumbering pace that added to the contrast between him and Johnny. The gymnasium swallowed them up and Tommy went on, passing within smelling distance of the kitchens in Lawrence Hall and sniffing the air eagerly. This was a Saturday, and generally on Saturdays the evening meal was extremely satisfactory. Tommy almost regretted those peanuts. Still, nearly an hour must elapse before he would be allowed to assimilate more food, and Tommy’s recuperative powers were of the best. He reached the walk between Borden and Upton, turned to the right and presently disappeared into the latter dormitory.