“I know. A team always feels lost without its captain. It’s going to make a difference in our chances of winning, too. I still think we can pull it out, but—we’ll have to work harder to do it.”
“Funny to have it happen in a game like to-day’s,” grumbled the manager. “Why, it was the easiest game of the season!”
“You never can tell about that,” replied Logan. “You get hurt when you least expect it. Remember two years ago when Tommy Winship broke his arm in the gym? He didn’t fall three feet! Well——” He stretched and yawned widely. “Gee, I’m tired! It was too blamed hot to-day for football.”
“Yes,” the coach agreed, absently. He was making meaningless marks on the edge of the paper before him. After a moment: “I suppose it would be a decent thing to please Jack under the circumstances and start Morely instead of Preston,” he said thoughtfully. “I don’t believe it would matter much, anyway.”
“Pleasing Jack isn’t what we’re here for,” said Payson Walsh, frowning. “We want to win a week from to-day, Coach. That’s our stunt. Ted Morely’s a sort of protegé of Jack’s, and Jack thinks Ted’s been misjudged, and he wants to give the chap a chance to prove it. He said so himself. But we’re not staging the contest for Morely’s benefit. If he’s got the reputation of being a quitter—and as a matter of fact he has, as you know, Larry—it’s his own fault. It isn’t up to us to worry. Preston’s the man for the job and I say, use him.”
The coach nodded. “You’re probably right,” he said.
Had Ted Morely known what was being said about him down in the village he would not have sped his pen so calmly over the paper, but, as it was, he was at peace with the world. He was writing of the afternoon’s game at length and with, perhaps, unnecessary detail, for his father and mother knew woefully little about football. Having reached the end of the third page, he laid down his pen and read over his effort.
“It was rotten luck for Jack, and everyone’s awfully sorry for him. They say he’s quite out of the Fairfield game. Isn’t that the limit? I haven’t seen him since they lugged him off the field, but I guess he’s beastly cut up about it. I took his place after he was hurt and played all of the fourth quarter. You know I’ve been fighting Preston all Fall, and now it looks like I’d won. Anyway, if Jack doesn’t play Saturday I’m bound to get in sooner or later, for Fairfield plays a stiff game and not many fellows last through. To-day we were 17 to their 7 when I went in and Thornton ran in a lot of subs and we only tried to hold the other fellow from scoring any more. You needn’t worry about my shoulder because it’s just as good as it ever was. I wouldn’t have said anything about it if it had been serious——”
He scored that out heavily and wrote above it. “It was only a wrench and nothing to bother about. I’ve been in mean luck this Fall about getting bunged up. You remember I had tonsilitis when we played Camden High and then there was the time I sort of fainted at practice one day, but that was only something I’d eaten, the doctor said, and then hurting that old shoulder took me out of the Fielding game. I’ll bet you that if they let me play Saturday there won’t be anything the matter with me, or if there is no one will know it! We want to win this year pretty bad and the school’s made up its mind to do it, too. I wish you could see some of the meetings we’ve been having. Talk about enthusiasm, gee, no one’s got anything on us. Well, I’ll write again after the game and you’ll know then how it comes out. If you want to know before that you will find it in the Reading paper, I guess. Now I must stop and go to bed. I’ve written a pretty long letter for me. Lots of love to you both.”
He signed it “Your aff. son, Ted,” folded it away into the envelope, wrote the address and leaned the letter against the drop-light so that he would see it and remember to borrow a stamp from his room-mate and post it the next morning. Then, with a comfortable yawn, he arose and removed his jacket. In doing so he winced slightly, frowned and rubbed his left shoulder a moment before he began to wind the old-fashioned silver watch that had been his father’s and had descended to him on his sixteenth birthday, nearly a year ago. When his room-mate came in Ted was fast asleep and dreaming brave dreams.