Afterwards, during the thirty minutes’ scrimmage with the scrubs, Myers dogged the first team every moment. “Keep your back straight, right guard! Lock it! Watch your feet, right tackle! That’s not the way I showed you, not by a long sight! You played too high, left guard! You let your man under you! Charge from below! Great jumpin’ Judas! Use your hands, center! That man ought never to have got through!” And so it went, with Coach Cade making life merry for the backs, Captain Gus doing a little criticizing on his own hook and the quarter imploring the gray empyrean for just one man who could keep his signals straight! Jim played a long session that Wednesday afternoon, and he finished with the suspicion that football practice, as the season neared its climax, was going to be something quite different from anything he had imagined. But he was going to like it. He knew that!
That evening coaches and players met again in Mr. Cade’s quarters and a long session developed. Jim was not among the eight or nine players invited, and he spent most of the evening going over the affairs of the Maine-and-Vermont Society, which, with a present membership of nearly forty, was in flourishing condition. Last of all, he wrote politely imperative reminders to delinquent members on Clem’s small typewriter. Jim was not an accomplished typist and he spent a good deal more time than he would have consumed had he written the notes by hand. But there is no denying that the typed results possessed a certain air of authority that Jim’s sprawling writing would have failed to attain, and this in spite of many erasures and several misspelled words. Clem came back while Jim was still struggling with the envelopes and offered advice of no value and laughed immoderately at the way Jim’s tongue stuck out when he was hunting for what he called the “pedals.” Jim finally ended his task and assembled the half-dozen missives atop his chiffonier for delivery on the morrow, looking not a little triumphant.
“Aren’t you going to put stamps on them?” asked Clem from the depths of his arm-chair.
“Stamps cost money,” replied Jim, shaking his head. “I’m my own postman.”
“That’s a swell society! Doesn’t allow the secretary money for postage!”
“Yes, it does, but the secretary has good legs,” countered Jim. “It’s no trouble to dump these things in the letter boxes in the halls as I go by. You see, Clem, I was brought up economical!”
“That so?” Clem yawned and began to unlace a shoe. “Maybe they don’t have stamps in Maine. I suppose when you write a letter at home, Jim, you put your snowshoes on and hike across country with it, eh? Say, talking of societies, how would you like to join Janus?”
“Me?” said Jim. “That the one you belong to? What’s it cost?”
“Not much. Anyway, a fellow doesn’t generally ask the cost of joining, old son; he looks grateful and kisses his benefactor’s hand. Janus, Jim, is—well, it’s Janus. ’Nough said. If you belong to Janus you’re made for life.”
“Huh,” said Jim, “that’s what you hear about all of ’em. Guess it’s too high for my pocket-book, Clem. Much obliged, though.”