"I'll bet you he won't be able to catch a punt," growled Cloud. "A fool like him can no more learn football than--than--"
"Than you could learn golf," continued West sweetly.
"Oh, shut up! I know a mule that plays golf better than you do."
"Well, I sha'n't attempt to compete with your friends, Bart."
"There you both go, quarreling again," cried Clausen. "If you don't shut up, I'll have to whip the pair of you."
Wallace Clausen was about two thirds the size of Cloud, and lacked both the height and breadth of shoulder that made West's popular nickname of "Out" West seem so appropriate. Clausen's threat was so absurd that Cloud came back to good humor with a laugh, and even West grinned.
"Come on, Wall--there's Blair," said Cloud. "You'd better come too, Out, and learn something about a decent game." West shook his head, and the other two arose and hurried away to where the captain of the school eleven was standing beneath the west goal, surrounded by a crowd of variously attired football aspirants. West, left to himself, sighed lazily and fell to digging holes in the turf with his brassie. Tiring of this amusement in a trice, he arose and sauntered over to the side-line and watched the operations. Some sixty boys, varying in age from fifteen to nineteen, some clothed in full football rig, some wearing the ordinary dress in which they had stepped from the school rooms an hour before, all laughing or talking with the high spirits produced upon healthy youth by the tonic breezes of late September, were standing about the gridiron. I have said that all were laughing or talking. This is not true; one among them was silent.
For standing near by was the youth who had aroused the merriment of Cloud and Clausen, and who West had shortly before dubbed "rural." And rural he looked. His gray and rather wrinkled trousers and his black coat and vest of cheap goods were in the cut of two seasons gone, and his discolored straw hat looked sadly out of place among so many warm caps. But as he watched the scene with intent and earnest face there was that about him that held West's attention. He looked to be about seventeen. His height was above the ordinary, and in the broad shoulders and hips lay promise of great strength and vigor.
But it was the face that attracted West most. So earnest, honest, and fearless was it that West unconsciously wished to know it better, and found himself drawing nearer to the straw hat and baggy gray trousers. But their owner appeared to be unconscious of his presence and West paused.
"I don't believe that chap knows golf from Puss-in-the-Corner," mused West, "but I'll bet a dozen Silvertowns that he could learn; and that's more than most chaps here can. I almost believe that I'd loan him my new dogwood driver!"