“Of course,” explained Laurie, in recognition of his brother’s look of pained inquiry, “I’m not making the offer because I think Ned can’t do it, or because I don’t want him to play. You bet I do! It’s because I do want him to, Kewpie. You see, I usually lose bets!”
“All right, you crazy galoot. I’ve got to beat it. Pinky made us swear by the Great Horn Spoon to be in bed by ten. Good night. Don’t let the signal stuff worry you, Nid. It’ll come out all right to-morrow. You understand. Night!”
When the door had closed, Laurie laughed and turned to Ned. “He’s a good old scout, isn’t he? I say, what’s the matter with you, Ned? You look like the end of a hard winter! Cheer up! It may not be true!”
But Ned shook his head, although he tried to smile unconcernedly. “It’ll happen just the way he told, Laurie,” he said, sadly. “I just know it will! They’ll get Pope out of the way, and there’ll be a field goal wanted, just as there was Wednesday, and Mulford will send me in!”
“Well, what of it? You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”
“I—I’m scared!”
“Oh, piffle, Neddie! You’ve got nerves, that’s all. The night before the battle, you know, and all that! In the morning you’ll be as right as rain. Get your clothes off and tumble in. Want me to read a story to you? There’s a corker in the ‘Post’ this week.”
“No, thanks; I guess not. I’d better go to sleep.”
But, although Ned, stifling a desire to sit up and read the corking story himself, put the light out at ten minutes before ten, he lay awake until after midnight and suffered as blue a case of funk as any boy ever did. And when, at length, sleep came, it was filled with visions in which he stood in the center of a vast arena, the object of countless eyes, and tried over and over, and never with success, to kick a perfectly gigantic leather ball over a cross-bar that was higher than the Masonic Temple at home!
The truth is that Ned was over-trained and stale. And the further truth is that when he awoke to as sweet a November morning as ever peered down from a cloudless sky through golden sunlight, he felt, as he phrased it to himself, like a sock that had just come through the wringer!