“Not a bit. I’d be glad to have you do it then. I—I want to have a bit of a talk with you, Dorr.”
“All right, then; to-morrow night. Oh, by the way, you forgot to ask about the cost of this job.”
“So I did!” exclaimed Hansel in some confusion. “How much—er—will you charge?”
“It’ll be a dollar and twenty-five cents. You see, I’ll have to use three brackets, and they cost quite a lot.”
“Of course, and so does the board, I guess.”
“Well, I get that down at the mill; they let me have lumber at wholesale prices. Good night.”
Bert came in ten minutes later and at once looked at the wall over the couch. Hansel thought he seemed disappointed at finding it still bare.
There was a shake-up in the eleven that afternoon. Bert experimented with the position of left tackle, for which his weight and build admirably fitted him; but the experiment wasn’t a howling success, and he went back of the line again very contentedly. Mr. Ames abducted a heavily-built youth from the first class team, and seemed fairly well pleased with the result. But, altogether, the line-up that day was a mixed-up affair, in which no one played for more than three or four minutes at a time in any one position. Even Hansel was shifted over to left end for a while, and later given a chance at left tackle. But the latter position was a new one for him, and he didn’t shine in it. Everybody, the coach included, was heartily glad when the work was over for the day. Mr. Ames, Bert, and Harry went up to the gymnasium together, and, judging from the way hands were waved and heads shaken, they weren’t very well satisfied with existing football conditions. Some of the team who were aware of having lately offended felt uneasy.
The next day three second team men went onto the first; among them Phipps, the quarter back. Things went better, as a result, if we except an injury to Cameron’s knee which threatened to keep him out of the game for at least a week. In the ten-minute scrimmage, the first managed to score three times on the second, and there was a better exhibition of team work than at any time so far during the fall.