“Don’t you believe it, Lanny! Cheer up and hear the birdies sing! Things will turn out all right in a few days. You see if they don’t.”
“Hope so, I’m sure. I’m willing to do my level best, but I can’t be captain and coach and everything else. We’ve got a poor lot of new men this Fall, too. And then there’s Morris’s leg to worry about. The doctor says he can play and Morris says his leg’s all right, but if we go to work and build up the team around his kicking and then he has another injury to it or his father says he can’t play we’ll be in a nice fix! We’ve got to develop a couple of punters somehow, but I’m sure I don’t know where to look for them. Wayland isn’t so poor, but he doesn’t seem to get the hang of it. Well, good night, Gordon. Sorry I’ve bothered you.”
“That’s all right,” laughed the other. “It will do you good to get it off your chest. You’ll find, though, that the fellows will all work harder, Lanny, if they’ve got it to do. And—and I’ll tell you what I’ll do.”
“Spring it!”
“I’ll bet you the sodas at Castle’s that we have a coach within a week.”
“Take you! I’d buy Castle’s whole soda fountain if I could get a coach that way. Good night!”
CHAPTER IV
LOUISE HAS AN IDEA
Clearfield played Highland Hall Military Academy four days later and it is safe to say that practically the entire juvenile population of the town turned out to see the first football game of the season. Perhaps the weather had something to do with the size of the audience that filled the grandstand and overflowed on the field, for there was a zest and a snap to the air that hinted overcoats, and the sun played hide-and-seek behind the scudding gray clouds. Brent Field, as the High School athletic grounds are called, is only a scant block and a half from the river and when the wind is from the northwest, as it was this afternoon, the few scattered buildings between field and river afford but little protection.
Highland Hall had brought along most of its Fourth Year Class—the Academy regulations forbade members of other classes accompanying the teams away from school—and the forty-odd boys looked very fine and manly in their cadet-blue cape-coats, below which tan-gaitered legs twinkled. They assembled at one end of the stand and gave their team a lusty welcome when it trotted on the gridiron, waving their blue-and-blue banners proudly. The dark blue and light blue of the flags was repeated in the costumes of the players, and their sweaters held the letters H. H. M. A. cunningly arranged, the first H taking the form of a football goal and the other letters appearing in the space under the cross-bar. But, in spite of the neat attire of players and supporters, Highland Hall was no dangerous adversary. The fellows, as Fudge explained to Gordon, were allowed only two hours a day for recreation and were coached by the Commandant, a grave martinet of a man who knew more of military tactics than football. Fudge and Gordon were seated on the bench, after a ten-minute workout, and Fudge, who had more flesh than he needed, was still breathing hard from his exertions.