“That’s all well enough, Jimmy, but suppose I can’t pitch a little bit when the time comes?”
“By Ginger, you’ve got to! Look here, you’re wasting time. You ought to be at it every day. You ought to get down in the cage in the gym and practice. What time is it now? Nearly six, eh? Too late today, then. But tomorrow we’ll put in a half-hour, and the next day, too, and right along until they call candidates. I’ll catch you. I’ll borrow a mitt somewhere. It’ll be good fun, too. Practice for both of us. Great scheme, eh?”
“Do you mind?” asked Dud eagerly.
“Love to! We’ve got a week yet and you ought to be able to get a lot of practice in a week. That’s settled, then. But we mustn’t forget the—er—the social side of the campaign. So let’s see.” Jimmy bent over his list again. “Quinn, check. Milford—had him before. Forbes——”
The second visit to Hugh Ordway’s study came off right on schedule, nine days after the first call, but on this occasion Dud and Jimmy found the room jammed from door to windows with fellows and a loud and even violent argument going on. Their appearance went practically unnoticed and they found seats with some difficulty and became for a while silent listeners. The argument proved to be concerned with the election the evening before of one Starling Meyer as captain of the Hockey Team. The hockey team had just finished a disastrous season, ending with a second defeat by Grafton’s ancient rival, Mount Morris. Lack of hard ice had aided in the team’s demoralization, but besides that things had gone badly from start to finish, and there were many who credited the afore-mentioned Meyer with having been largely to blame. “Pop” Driver, who played right guard on the eleven and was normally good-natured to a fault, expressed the views of the anti-Meyer faction.
“Meyer,” Pop was saying, “has caused more trouble all the winter than he’s worth. Everything that Yetter’s wanted to do one way, Star’s insisted on doing another. You fellows know that, all of you. Look at the way they changed the style of play in the middle of the season. Yetter started out playing four men on defense and it worked all right. Then Star got to saying that we weren’t scoring enough points and that the four-men-back business was all wrong. He grouched and sulked about it until Yetter gave in to him. After that we got licked right along, with one or two exceptions, and finally Yetter went back to the old style again, and Star threatened to quit and there was the dickens to pay for awhile. Star’s simply no use unless he can be the whole shooting-match.”
“Well, they’ve made him captain,” said Jim Quinn, football manager, “so now he can show what he knows.”
“There’s no sense in blaming everything on Star Meyer,” declared Ned Musgrave. “Yetter’s a good chap, but he hadn’t any business being captain. There’s where the whole trouble began. If Yetter——”
“Warren would have been all right,” said Bert Winslow, “if Star had let him alone. But Star hates to see anyone else have any say about anything. He’s a peach of a hockey player, I’ll grant you that, but he’s a peach of a trouble-maker, too. And I’ll bet you anything things will be in a worse mess next year than they were this.”