Save that he “weighed in” on the gymnasium scales the next afternoon, while the worried looking Johnny Barr set the figures down against his name, Saturday’s program was just like Friday’s. He wasn’t quite so stiff Saturday night, though, as he had been after the first session. Clem, feeling responsibility in the matter, asked how he had got along. Jim said: “All right, I guess.” That’s about all he did say regarding his football experiences for the next week. He had bought a book of rules, and Clem observed that every evening he spent a matter of ten or fifteen minutes on it. Once or twice he invited Clem’s aid, but Clem wasn’t much use to him.
“You know,” said Clem one evening, “you don’t really have to know the rules by heart, Jim. You’re not going to referee; you’re just going to play the game.”
“I sort of like to know what it’s all about, though,” said Jim. “And maybe,” he added, with a twinkle, “if the referee made a mistake I’d want to be able to tell him.”
“Yes, I’d try it,” scoffed Clem, who hadn’t seen the twinkle. “You’d make a big hit all around!”
He was “duck walking” and pushing the charging machine these days, for he was listed as a lineman. And he was having his six goes regularly at the tackling dummy, besides. His education was branching out. Perhaps because he had been through the work last year he made steady progress, although he was lacking in the experience of those of his companions who had played football since they were twelve years old. At tackling he was good, and he got praise more than once; and he was learning to handle a ball in a safe, clean fashion, no longer treating it as if it were an egg that might break if he was rude to it. At the end of the first fortnight he was as good a football man as some twenty others on the field and better than perhaps ten more. As that particular ten ceased their connection with football shortly after the Banning High game, Jim was left for a space superior to none.
So far, save for a word in passing, he had held no communication with Coach Cade, and if that gentleman felt any satisfaction over Jim’s presence among the players he disguised it perfectly. Not that Jim had expected any expression of gratitude, of course, but it was difficult to reconcile Clem’s statement on that first night of the term with the coach’s apparent complete indifference. Clem had declared that Mr. Cade was anxious to have Jim report. And since he had reported, Mr. Cade had never even noticed him. Jim reached the not unnatural conclusion that Clem had slightly exaggerated the coach’s concern.
Lowell Woodruff, though, fully atoned for any inattention on the coach’s part. Lowell assured Jim more than once that he fully appreciated the latter’s presence among the candidates, and he was almost embarrassingly solicitous as to his welfare. In fact, his efforts to keep Jim contented with his lot were so painstaking that Jim got it into his head that the manager was making fun of him, and he took a mild dislike to the well-meaning Lowell. As he made no mention of the matter to Clem, the misunderstanding existed well into the season.
Alton played the local high school team, winning by 21 to 7 in a long and uninteresting contest, and defeated Banning High School a week later by 17 to 0. Jim watched both contests from the bench and added considerably to his knowledge of the science in which he was a beginner. But neither game produced any thrilling moments, and Jim continued unmoved in his opinion that football was rather an uninteresting pursuit and certainly not deserving of all the time and attention given it. Then, after a week of practice that made the preceding fortnight seem in retrospect a period of languid idleness, Lorimer Academy visited Alton, and Jim’s conviction was slightly shaken.