A week passed, and the twins began to feel like old residents. They had ceased being “the Turner twins” to acquaintances, although others still referred to them so, and their novelty had so far worn off that they could enter a classroom or walk side by side across the yard without being conscious of the rapt, almost incredulous stares of the beholders. To merely casual acquaintances they were known as Ned and Laurie; to a few friends they had become Nid and Nod. Kewpie was responsible for that. He had corrupted “Ned” into “Nid,” after which it was impossible for Laurie to be anything but “Nod.” Laurie had demurred for a time, demanding to be informed who Nod had been. Kewpie couldn’t tell him, being of the hazy belief that Nid and Nod were brothers in some fairy story he had once read, but he earnestly assured Laurie that both had been most upright and wholly estimable persons. Anyhow, Laurie’s objections wouldn’t have accomplished much, for others had been prompt to adopt the nicknames and all the protests in the world wouldn’t have caused them to drop them. These others weren’t many in number, however: Kewpie and Thurman Kendrick and Lee Murdock and George Watson about made up the list of them at this time.
Kendrick was Kewpie’s room-mate, a smallish, black-haired, very earnest youth of sixteen, which age was also Kewpie’s. Thurman was familiarly known as “Hop,” although the twins never learned why. He was a candidate for quarter-back on the eleven and took his task very seriously. Lee Murdock was one of the baseball crowd, and Laurie had scraped acquaintance with him on the diamond during a practice game. The word “scraped” is used advisedly, for Laurie, in sliding to second base, had spiked much of the skin from Lee’s ankle. Of such incidents are friendships formed! Lee was two years older than Laurie, a big, rather raw-boned fellow with a mop of ash-colored hair and very bright blue eyes.
George Watson was sixteen, an upper middler, and, as Laurie frequently assured him, no fit associate for a respectable fellow. To the latter assertion George cheerfully agreed, adding that he always avoided such. He came from Wyoming and had brought with him a breeziness of manner that his acquaintances, rightly or wrongly, described as “wild and woolly.” Of the four, Kewpie and George were more often found in company with the twins.
There had been four lessons in kicking on an open lot behind the grammar school, two short blocks away, and while Ned had not yet mastered the gentle art of hurtling a football through the air, Kewpie was enthusiastic about his pupil’s progress. “Why, geewhillikins, Nid,” he broke forth after the fourth session, “you’re a born kicker! Honest you are! You’ve got a corking swing and a lot of drive. You—you’ve got real form, that’s what you’ve got. You understand. And you certainly do learn! Of course, you haven’t got it all from me, because you’ve been punting in practice two or three times, but I take some of the credit.”
“You’ve got a right to,” responded Ned. “You’ve taught me a lot more than I’ve learned on the field. Gee, if it hadn’t been for you I’d been afraid even to try a punt over there! You ought to see the puzzled way that Pope looks at me sometimes. He can’t seem to make me out, because, I suppose, Joe Stevenson told him I was a crackajack. Yesterday he said, ‘You get good distance, Turner, and your direction isn’t bad, but you never punt twice the same way!’”
“Well, you don’t,” laughed Kewpie. “But you’ll get over that just as soon as I can get it into your thick head that the right way’s the best and there’s only one right!”
“I know,” said Ned, humbly. “I mean to do the way you say, but I sort of forget.”
“That’s because you try to think of too many things at once. Stop thinking about your leg and just remember the ball and keep your eyes on it until it’s in the air. That’s the secret, Nid. I heard Joe telling Pinky the other day that you’d ought to shape up well for next year.”
“Next year!” exclaimed Ned, dubiously. “Gee! mean to tell me I’m going through all this work for next year?”
“Well, you might get a place this year, for all you know,” replied Kewpie, soothingly. “Just keep on coming, Nid. If you could only—well, if you had just a bit more speed now, got started quicker, you know, Pinky would have you on the second squad in no time, I believe. You’re all right after you get started, but—you understand.”