Wyndham was highly pleased with the result of that afternoon’s performance since, any way you looked at it, 20 to 0 was eight points better than Wolcott’s score of 19 to 7. There was also a pleasant conviction that, had she wanted to, Wyndham could have done even better. The only fly in the ointment came to light the next day when a perusal of the morning papers revealed the fact that Wolcott had defeated Toll’s Academy 26 to 9.
Toll’s was Wyndham’s next opponent, and had been counted on to give the Dark Blue a lot of trouble. The New York team had gone through five contests without having her goal-line crossed and it had been expected that she would hold Wolcott to a very meager score. Indeed, there were plenty at Wyndham who had, no later than yesterday, predicted for Wolcott nothing better than a tie game. Tom refused to believe his own paper and was only convinced of the correctness of the score when Clif’s journal told the same story. In the light of that result it was necessary to either revise their former opinion of Toll’s or to credit Wolcott with being about fifty per cent better than they had considered her. Tom’s well-known capacity for pessimism helped him make out a very good case in favor of the latter alternative.
“If Wolcott can make four touchdowns on Toll’s she can trim us, Clif,” he declared gloomily.
“But she didn’t. She made three touchdowns and a field-goal. Can’t you read?”
“Well, three, then. It makes no difference. Say, I’ll bet Toll’s will hand us an awful wallop next Saturday!”
“How do you get that way?” asked Clif indignantly. “If we aren’t as good as Wolcott this minute I’ll—I’ll treat! Look at yesterday’s game.”
“Sure, but we’re playing Toll’s on her own field, and you know that makes a big difference. Wolcott played her at home, with all the cheering her own way. Say, it doesn’t say a word about that boy wonder of theirs, Goshawk, or whatever his name is. According to this, he didn’t score a point. He was in the line-up, though; played right end.”
“Probably Wolcott didn’t pull many forward-passes,” said Clif. “Guess she didn’t have to. Maybe she thought we’d have some scouts there. Say, I wonder why ‘G. G.’ didn’t go over, or send some one.”
“Next week,” answered Tom. “He’d rather get his dope fresh. That’s what I heard, anyway.”
After church Clif’s father appeared in the blue car and there was another gorgeous feed at the Inn. This time Tom was the only guest, for Walter was taking dinner with friends in the village. The weather was not at all kind, and the ride in the afternoon was short, and Mr. Bingham’s brief visit came to an end well before darkness had set in. When he said good-by and was speeding off down the drive, the red tail-light gleaming between the trees, Clif had a momentary qualm of something very like homesickness. But it didn’t survive the journey up to Number 34, where Tom and Billy Desmond, the latter stretched luxuriously between the protuberances of his beloved couch, were wrangling joyously over the relative merits of the Princeton and Yale teams. Besides, Clif recalled, his father had promised faithfully to come up for the Wolcott game, and that was but three weeks away. He was to make an early start from Providence on Saturday morning, get to Freeburg by noon and then take Clif and Tom and probably a couple of other fellows over to Cotterville in time for the big event. Clif got over his brief depression as he reached Number 34, and, throwing himself on Tom’s bed, remarked maliciously that, as for Yale or Princeton, there was only one real football team doing business that fall. “Listen, you two. Cornell could lick either of them without getting really warmed up well!”