“I think,” laughed Rodney, “that I’m full of soda.” He pushed his glass away.
“Don’t you like it?” asked Matty, viewing his unemptied glass.
“Yes, but I’ve got to walk up that hill yet. I’m thinking about that.”
“You don’t have to go back yet, do you? Let’s you and I play against them at croquet. It’s only fair we should beat them at something!”
So presently they toiled up the street to the little side gate in the hedge, and after recovering from their exertion—for thirty games of tennis leaves one rather disinclined for further effort for awhile—they played three fairly hard games of croquet, of which Rodney and Matty managed to win two.
A week later autumn announced her arrival. Rodney awoke one morning to find a brisk wind blowing and the trees nearly bare of foliage. Yellow and red and russet-brown leaves frolicked along the roads and there was a keen nip in the air that lent zest to living. After that football practice was less like hard labor, and the players didn’t come off the field bathed in perspiration and feeling as though they had emerged from a particularly strenuous Turkish bath. That afternoon Coach Cotting drove his charges hard. As soon as the candidates reached the field they were put to work punting or catching, all, that is, save Stacey Trowbridge and Roger Tyson, who put in the time trying goals from the field. At last, when all the players were out, there was one lap around the track at a fast jog, the pace being set by Mr. Cotting, who, clad in a faded green jersey and an old pair of gray flannel trousers, trotted at the head of the bunch. For several minutes one heard only the fall of many feet on the cinders, the swish-swish of rasping canvas, and the breathing of the runners. When the circuit was complete the several squads assembled quickly and, under the direction of shrill-voiced quarterbacks, went through twenty minutes of signal work. Then:
“All right!” called the coach. “Get your head guards!”
That was the signal for scrimmage, and the fellows hurried to the sidelines and donned the black leather helmets. Somehow, everything to-day was done on the jump. The brisk weather was incentive enough, and the coach’s perfunctory “Look alive, fellows!” was quite unnecessary. Later, though, when the second squad backs appeared to have lost some of their snap, the coach’s voice rang out harshly enough.
“Stop loafing, you backs! If I catch you at it again out you come! And you don’t go back! Now get into it!”