“I did it!” he exclaimed. “I did it then, Mr. Addicks! Did you see me?”
“Yes, you got it at last. Notice the difference?”
“Yes, indeed!”
“Of course you do! Before you were fighting with yourself. Now your muscles all work together. Sit down a minute and rest. Then I want to see you start from the mark down there and come fairly fast to the corner. See how quickly you can get your stride and your form. Run easily to about that white mark on the rim up there and finish hard.”
Because Perry feared that the others would think him silly, he had sworn Fudge to secrecy regarding the early-morning lessons, and Fudge, who was as communicative a youth as any in Clearfield but could be as close-mouthed as a sulky clam on occasions, kept the secret, and no one but Mr. Addicks, his pupil and Fudge knew until long after what went on at Brent Field between six and seven on fair mornings. Perry learned fast, partly because he was naturally an apt pupil and partly because Mr. Addicks was a patient and capable instructor. When a point couldn’t be made quite clear with words Mr. Addicks stepped onto the cinders and illustrated it, and Perry couldn’t help but understand. I think Mr. Addicks got as much pleasure, and possibly as much benefit, from the lessons as Perry did. He confessed the second morning that what little running he had done the day before had lamed him considerably, and declared his intention of getting back into trim again and staying there. At the end of a week he was doing two and three laps of the track and never feeling it. Fudge, who joined them occasionally, became ardently admiring of such running as that of Mr. Addicks’ and regretted that he had not gone in for the middle distances. “That,” he confided to Perry one morning, “is what I call the p-p-p-poetry of motion!” And he managed to make it sound absolutely original!
Mr. Addicks insisted that Perry should specialize on the two-hundred-and-twenty-yards dash, and coached him carefully over almost every foot of that distance, from the moment he put his spikes into the holes and awaited the signal, until he had crossed the line, arms up and head back. Perry, who had been complimented on his starting, discovered to his surprise that he was very much of a duffer at it. Mr. Addicks made him arrange his holes further apart in each direction and showed him how to crouch with less strain on his muscles. And he showed him how to get away from the mark with a quicker straightening of the body, so that, after a week of practice, he could find his stride at the end of the first fifteen yards and be running with body straight and in form. And then at last one morning there came a time-trial over the two hundred and twenty yards and, with Fudge sending him away and Mr. Addicks holding the watch at the finish, Perry put every ounce of power into his running and trotted back to be shown a dial on which the hand had been stopped at twenty-four and one-fifth!
“Why—why——” stammered Perry breathlessly, “that’s a fifth under the time Lanny made last year!”
“That doesn’t signify much,” replied Mr. Addicks. “This time may be a fifth of a second wrong one way or another. And you must remember that White probably made his record when he was tired from the hundred yards. Anyway, it’s fair time, Perry, and if you can do as well as that in the meet you’ll probably get second place at least.”
Fudge, hurrying up to learn the result, stuttered rapturously on being told. “I t-t-t-told him he’d m-m-m-make a p-p-peach of a s-s-s-sprinter! D-d-d-didn’t——”
“You did,” laughed Perry. “Couldn’t I try the hundred now, Mr. Addicks?”