“Well, there it is, then!” said Hugh triumphantly. “You know what you can do and I don’t! What I say is——”
Bert laughed. “Oh, you dry up and go to sleep, Hugh. It’s all right, old man. I did act like a beast, and I’m sorry, and I beg your pardon. And that’s all of that, I guess. For the rest of it, I hope you’ll play a rattling good game, Hugh, and if I’m to substitute you I hope I won’t get in at all. Good night!”
“Well, but—now hold on, old dear! I want to tell you——”
“Not tonight. It’s after eleven. Go to sleep.”
Hugh grunted as he heard the bed creak in the other room. Then he thumped his pillow and settled down again.
“Just the same,” he murmured, “it’s piffling poppycock! That’s just what it is, piffling poppycock!”
CHAPTER XXIV
HUGH GOES TO THE VILLAGE
There was the lightest sort of practice on Thursday for the regular, but the third-string players, reinforced by three or four first subs, among them Bert, gave the second a hard tussle for two fifteen-minute halves. Hugh didn’t see that game, for with the other first-choice players he was dispatched to the showers the minute practice was done, but he heard about it afterwards from Peet, who, at least according to his own story, was the one particular bright spot in the second team’s back-field. Peet wasn’t a very eloquent conversationalist and his report was vague and jerky, but Hugh gathered that Bert had more than distinguished himself that afternoon. There had, said Peet, been one burst through the whole second team that had netted forty-odd yards. And he had frequently piled through Myatt and Bowen for three and four at a whack. You just couldn’t stop him! He’d gained two once with both Hanser and Ayer hanging around his neck! And, in the end, he had crashed his way through the second team’s center from the six yards for the only touchdown scored by the substitutes. Hugh was very glad and hoped that Coach Bonner, who, according to Peet, had watched the game through, would change his mind and let Bert start on Saturday.
That was the second team’s final game of the season and they won it 10 to 6. When it was over they cheered the first team, the coaches, the school, themselves and whatever else they could think of, and joyfully—and perhaps a little regretfully—disbanded.