“That’s it then. Well, I won’t ask you what it is that’s bothering you, Todd. It’s none of my business. But I am going to ask you to put it out of your mind, whatever it is, for the next fortnight. I can use you, my boy, if you’ll let me. As long ago as the fourth or fifth day of the season I assigned you a distinct and important place in the scheme of winning the Kenly game. I didn’t take you into my confidence for a very good reason. You had a lot to learn about the game, about the very beginning of football, and I didn’t want you to get it into your head that you were a specialist and neglect the essentials. The only kind of a specialist I want around me is the man who knows every department of the game and then can do one thing better than any one else. That’s why I’ve let you go your own gait, in a way, and that’s why I’m not telling you even now what’s been in my mind. For that matter, I haven’t told any one. Just now it doesn’t look as though I’d have to, Todd. But if you can just manage to snap out of the doldrums and get back to where you were a week or ten days back, why, that’ll be different. Just show me that you’re on your toes again, keen and anxious and chock-full of fight and I’ll show you how you can help me and the team and the School to a victory a week from next Saturday. Now do you think you can do that, Todd?”
“I’ll try awful hard, sir,” answered Jim earnestly. “I guess if I knew that—that it really mattered, Mr. Cade, I could do a heap better.”
“Matters! Great Scott, of course it matters! You ought to know that without being told, Todd. The fact that you were kept on the squad when twenty or thirty other chaps, some of whom were showing more football than you were, were let go should have proved to you that you were valuable; or, anyway, that we thought you valuable. Every man on the squad, Todd, is supposed to do his level best, his very utmost, every minute of every day while the season lasts. He mustn’t expect the coach to pat him on the back or thank him after every practice, my boy. You went bad on us last year, you know, and I’d have had a very good excuse for keeping you out of the squad this fall if I’d wanted one. Now it looks as though you were working yourself into the same attitude of mind again, Todd. It’s all wrong, though. When we pick a man out of sixty or seventy others we do it not only because he shows football ability—football ability alone never won a game—but because we say to ourselves, ‘There’s a man who has the right stuff in him: loyalty, obedience, courage, determination, in short, the qualities that win battles whether in war or in football.’ Do you get the idea, Todd?”
“Yes, sir.” Jim looked troubled. “I’m sorry, but no one ever said it was like that. You see, Mr. Cade, I never saw much football till last fall, and I never knew much about—about schools and how fellows feel about them. Maybe I ain’t making myself clear—”
“I understand, my boy. Well, don’t you feel somewhat about this school, your school, as you’ve discovered that other chaps feel? You understand, don’t you, why a fellow will work and drudge and take hard knocks for two long months with no hope of glory, no expectation of getting into the limelight, as those fellows on the second team are doing?”
“Yes, sir, I understand that. Only—”
“Only what?”
Jim smiled apologetically. “It never seemed that anything I could do would—would make much difference, sir. I just ain’t much of a hero, I guess.”
“Well, you’ve got the wrong slant, Todd. Heroes don’t all win the Croix de Guerre. A lot of them just eat mud and never get their names on a citation. Modesty is all right, too, Todd, but too much of it is worse than too little sometimes. Perhaps what you need is a little praise.” He leaned forward and laid a hand on Jim’s knee. “So I’ll tell you this, and you can believe every word of it. You’re a natural-born football player, Todd. If you were going to be here one more year I’d turn you into as pretty a tackle as this school ever saw; and I’m not forgetting men like Martin Proctor, either. Even now, as inexperienced as you are, I’d back you against a lot of the fellows who have played your position on Alton Field this fall. Now does that help any?”
Jim shook his head, supremely embarrassed. “I don’t know, Mr. Cade. If you say so I guess I’ve got to believe it, but, gee, I ain’t—I can’t—”