Rodney glanced up in surprise and found the coach smiling.
“Why, sir, I thought—it seemed the best way out of it!”
“Best way out of what, Merrill?”
“Out of—out of the mess I made to-day. I lost the game, you know, sir!”
“Hardly that, Merrill. You failed to win it, but you can’t be said to have lost it. Even if you had, though, what’s that got to do with it? Seems to me if you made a mess of things you’d want to stick around and see what you could do another time. Sort of weak, isn’t it, to cut and run?”
“But—I thought—” Rodney stopped, trying to get the coach’s surprising point of view.
“I know what you thought, Merrill.” Mr. Cotting laid a hand on the boy’s shoulder. “You thought everyone had it in for you, that we blamed you for the loss of the game, and that we wouldn’t want you any longer, eh?”
“Yes, sir, about that.”
“Yes. Well, let me tell you something that happened to me, Merrill, when I was here, and that’s a good many years ago now. I made the team in my second year. Our game was a good deal different then from what it is now, but we took it pretty nearly as seriously. I was rather a clever end for a youngster, and so when we played Bursley I got in at the beginning of the second half. In those days an end had less to do than he has now, but he was supposed to get down under punts no matter what else he did or didn’t do, and that was rather a specialty of mine. I had a neat way of fooling my opponent and getting off quickly, and once off I was hard to stop. Bursley had us six to four when the second half began and we needed a touchdown to win. Half way through that half we punted and I streaked down under the ball. I remember that Stallings was our punter—he played with Princeton afterwards—and he was a wonder. Used to get fifty yards often. This time he outdid himself, and the Bursley quarter saw that the ball was going over his head and started back toward his goal for it. I was after him hard and the ball struck beyond both of us and bounded away at a funny angle toward the side of the field. We each got to it at about the same instant. I stood as good a chance of getting it as he did, better, I’ve always thought, because I was rather a clever kid with a rolling ball; and if I had got it I could have romped over the line for an easy score. Well, what do you suppose I did, Merrill?”
Rodney shook his head.