“Some one! Huh! The some one was you, then, I’ll bet! Say—”
But Tom was half-way up the stairs and Clif’s remarks were curtailed. Turning toward Number 17, he shook his head helplessly. Then, however, he chuckled.
After study hour Clif persuaded Tom to accompany him to Mr. McKnight’s. This was the evening of what “Lovey” called his “shindig.” Clif had visited his adviser several times since that first conference, but had never managed to attend one of the Friday night gatherings. Tom was far from enthusiastic, but yielded to his chum’s pleas. Besides, Clif accused him of duplicity and deceit, and several other dreadful things in connection with his election to the Scrub captaincy, and perhaps Tom felt that he owed Clif something in the way of apology. They found only eight others in Number 19 when they arrived; eight, that is, beside the instructor. During the next few minutes the number was augmented by the arrival of an attenuated youth with a surprisingly long neck and prominent Adam’s apple, which leaped convulsively when he talked, and a Junior who was painfully embarrassed, and spent the hour voiceless in a corner.
At first the guests looked to be a motley crowd, but after a while Clif concluded that there was nothing out of the ordinary about them. They represented, he decided, the non-athletic element of the school; or, to put it more fairly, the intellectual element. Tom was plainly sorry he had come. Introductions were necessary in many cases, though some of the fellows already claimed nodding acquaintance with the two. Mr. McKnight had already learned of Tom’s election and congratulated him very warmly, thereby spreading the news throughout the study. The youth with the agitated Adam’s apple, whose name proved to be, appropriately enough, Baldwin, and whom Tom ever after alluded to as “The Pippin,” insisted on shaking hands a second time with Tom and “felicitating” him. Baldwin modestly claimed brotherhood with Tom by reason of being somewhat athletic himself, having played last year on the Second Class Tennis Team. Whereupon Tom said: “Fine! Tennis is a great game. And I like croquet, too, Baldwin.” Baldwin agreed that croquet was doubtless an interesting pastime, but you could plainly see that he resented having it placed on a level with tennis.
“Lovey” went to the piano and played something that sounded extremely difficult, and horribly mixed-up. Clif enjoyed watching his hands, though. Evidently Mr. McKnight could play well, but Clif was relieved when he broke into a popular song and, setting the example in a good baritone, persuaded most of the company to sing. There were three or four vocal selections rendered, and then “Lovey” moved a small table into the center of the big, soft rug, and served refreshments of sandwiches and cake, and lemonade. Eating appeared to loosen the tongues of the “intellectuals,” and soon at least four debates were under way. Baldwin, half a sandwich poised in his right hand, a glass of lemonade in the other, stood before the empty grate and deplored the lack of opportunity for self-expression at Wyndham. Neither Clif nor Tom could hear him very well, but Tom stared fascinatedly at his throat, and murmured, “There it goes! Look at it! Up! Down! Up! Heck, he’s swallowed it!”
But he hadn’t.
Mr. McKnight sat down by Clif and talked football a while. He seemed to know a great deal about it, and presently Tom was weaned from his absorbed occupation of watching Baldwin, and took part in the talk. “Lovey” told them he hoped the Scrub would be as good this year as it had been last. “Babcock’s a clever coach, fellows. He’s taken some mighty unpromising material before this and turned out an excellent team.” Noting Tom’s grin, the instructor hastily amended. “I didn’t mean to say it just that way, Kemble,” he laughed. “From what I’ve heard and seen of his material this fall he’s rather better off than usual. To my thinking Babcock would make a fine First Team coach in case Mr. Otis failed us. Of course, though, he couldn’t give the time to it. Even now he’s pretty hard pressed to coach you chaps.”
“He’s an awfully good coach, I think,” agreed Clif. “He gets you to do things without telling you to, somehow. I mean, you want to please him, you know, and so you—you sort of just do things without waiting to be told!”
“That’s very true, Clif,” agreed Mr. McKnight. “He has always been able to win coöperation. We were at college together, although I knew him only slightly. He was a class ahead of me. But it was so with everything he went into there. They made him captain of the Senior eleven his last year, and he went in and won the class championship. It’s like pulling teeth without gas to get a senior to come out and practice for football, but Babcock did it somehow, and they licked the sophomores first, and then tackled us after we had nosed out ahead of the freshmen. Of course we expected to beat them badly, and every one else expected us to, but Babcock worked up a cheering section with plenty of tin pans, and watchman’s rattles—noise was always part of the game—and held us for the first half. I was only a substitute and didn’t get into the fun until the last minute. We got a field-goal in the third quarter, and thought we had the class championship won. But along toward the last of it Babcock called for time and got his crowd together and gave instructions. They had been using only six or eight old plays, and we’d had no trouble guessing what was coming. We could see Babcock making a sort of diagram with his finger on the ground, and the others bending over and watching, and we laughed, and our crowd on the side-line made fun of them. Then they came back and spread themselves all across the field in a ridiculous sort of formation, with only two men behind the line. Of course we spread out to cover them, and played our center back, and got all set for a tricky pass. But we were all wrong. Their quarterback took the ball, and came straight through with it, and, as we were wide open, he had a good start with two men making interference for him before we found out what was happening. We chased him sixty-odd yards, but every time one of us thought we had him, a Senior would crowd us off, and send us tumbling, and he went over right between the goal-posts—that was in the days of the free-try for goal—and so they licked us, seven to three. Babcock has told me since that he knew the only way to beat us was to get our forward line open, and that all that instruction and diagram stuff was merely bluff. All the instruction he gave was to the quarter. ‘Take the ball,’ he said, ‘and run it straight down for a score.’”