“But you see, coach,” Kentucky was desperately in earnest now, “you see there was a big crowd heading for the gate, just back of the goal. If we tried for a goal, we’d make it all right but the ball would go into the crowd and then—somebody’d plug a hole in that ball, let out the air and tuck it under his coat. So-o—”
“So you passed up your chance to give Dynamite a break.”
“Yes—yes. That’s it. It was all right wasn’t it, coach? Wasn’t it now? We—we didn’t need the point. The game was over and we—we’d won and everything.”
“Yes, Kentucky.” There was a wide smile of approval on the coach’s face. “It was more than all right. It was sporting! Just grand, Kentucky!”
“I—I’m glad,” Kentucky murmured. Kentucky had been worried about Dynamite but the instant he climbed from the car he spotted him. He was standing at the edge of the gathering crowd. Grinning a broad grin he said, “’Lo, Kentucky. Who won the game?
“It’s all right, old Kentuck,” he laughed. “I’m not a ghost. It takes more than a Naperville man to knock me out for keeps. That fellow rammed his head up under my chin and put me to sleep, that’s all. When I woke up, I felt better than ever. I’d had a good rest.” He laughed merrily.
When Johnny saw the crowd, he called loudly for help. The team responded to a man. They carried two steaming legs of beef, five leg o’ lambs, three hundred pies and all the rest of the feast to the big gym floor. There everybody feasted to his heart’s content.
Who was to pay the butcher and baker? In such a jam there was neither time nor opportunity to collect nickels, dimes, and quarters. Johnny had been too busy to notice such a trifling detail. It was not, however, entirely neglected.
“And now,” a big burly grad, wearing a tall paper hat exclaimed, “we shall proceed to pass the basket.”
Seizing one handle of a huge baker’s basket, he invited a pal of other days to join him, and together they made the rounds. The clink of silver and the flutter of green paper was heard and seen in every corner of the broad floor.