But they were very stern with him and in the end he accepted the duty with ill grace. There were three more lessons that week and Hoop officiated at two of them, the other being given by Spud. Strangely enough, Hoop, after the first time, became interested in the task and was quite loth to relinquish in Spud’s favor when the third lesson was due. Clara’s duties began on Wednesday. On that afternoon he took Molly in charge and escorted her to the football field, where she occasioned not a little interest on the part of the candidates. It was something new and novel to have a girl in the audience at practice and I fancy some of the boys worked harder than usual in the hope of distinguishing themselves and so winning a glance of approval from Miss Molly. Clara was very patient and instructive. A few weeks before he had had very little football knowledge himself, but he had watched and studied with enthusiasm and was now a very capable instructor. Molly had never seen the game played before, but, while she objected to it at first as being much too rough, it wasn’t long before she was an ardent champion of the House Team. Clara lent her his rule book and she studied it diligently during the next week. Some of the questions she asked were a trifle disconcerting; such as “Why don’t they have the field smaller so they won’t have so far to go to make a touchdown?” or “Would it count anything if they threw the ball over that bar instead of kicking it?” She listened avidly to all the football discussions on the steps of West House and declared on Friday that if House didn’t beat Hall she’d never speak to any of them again. That threat must have nerved the House Team to desperation, for on the next afternoon it battled valiantly against Hall and managed to hold its opponent scoreless through thirty-five of the forty minutes of playing time, and had begun to count on a tied game at least when a miserable fumble by The Fungus on the Hall’s forty yard-line turned the fortunes of the day. It was Pete Grow himself who leaked through the House line, gathered up the ball and, protected by hastily formed interference, romped over the line with it for the only score of the game. They failed at goal and a few minutes later House trailed off the field vanquished to the tune of 5—0.
House was heart-broken. To have kept Hall at bay through thirty-five minutes of the fiercest sort of battling and then to lose on a fluke was the hardest sort of luck. The Fungus felt the disgrace keenly and looked forlorn and tragic enough to melt a heart of stone. After the first miserable ten minutes succeeding the game his team-mates set themselves generously to work to cheer him up.
“Your fault nothing!” scoffed big, good-hearted Westlake, the House center. “Why, any one of us ought to have got that ball. What if you did fumble it? Gee, we all do that. The trouble was that the rest of us weren’t quick enough to make it safe.”
“That’s right,” said Ned sadly. “I ought to have had it myself. That chap Pete Grow, though, was through like a streak.”
“I guess,” said Dutch, “it’s up to me, when you come right down to facts. I ought never to have let Grow through.”
“Never mind whose fault it was,” said Brooks cheerfully. “We’ve just got to get busy this week and get together. It mustn’t happen next time, fellows. We’ve got to develop team-play in the next five days or they’ll wipe up the sod with us. After all, we had them at a standstill until that pesky fumble.”
Clara and Molly went back to West House silent and sad. But by the time they had reached the porch and Molly had established herself in her accustomed place with her slim back against a pillar the silence gave place to regrets and discussion. Molly was inclined to be indignant with the Hall.
“They oughtn’t to have taken advantage of Fungus’s mistake,” she declared. “I don’t think that was very—very sportsmanlike, do you?”
But Clara pointed out to her that ethically Hall had not transgressed. “Fumbling’s part of the game,” he said, “and you’ve got to take advantage of everything, Molly. We played a pretty good game, after all, I think.”
“We played a wonderful game!” she assented stoutly. “Why, we just put it all over the Hall at first.” Clara smiled at the phrase she used.