Though Hike was fairly obedient, the coach’s gloom did not get less. Hike had, one evening, the sudden terrible thought that he really and truly might not be allowed to play.
There was another danger, as well. Hike’s Latin was the poorest of his studies, and on the Monday before the game (which came on Thursday), “Old Grouch,” the Latin and Greek teacher, was going to have an important test for the Sophomores. A flunk in it would disqualify from playing.
Poodle took him in charge, in Latin—at which the cheerful poet was a shark. Every evening, just when Hike was planning a new sort of elevating plane or rotary valve, spoiling perfectly good pieces of paper with criss-cross lines, Poodle would slam the table three times, to get attention, open a grammar of Latin, or the travels of Julius Cæsar (who was so good at Latin that he wrote in it), and then make poor Hike listen to rules, which he pronounced idiotic, or battles of Cæsar, which Hike called, “prett’ slow fighting.”
“Well, maybe you think I like doing this better’n you do,” Poodle would protest, whereupon Hike would get very sorry and fairly good and have some more Latin poured into him.
As a result, he passed the test. But, at the last moment, would the coach think that he was “rested up” enough to be in condition to play?
Though the coach had been a good player himself, he was something of a crank. He seemed to believe that the best way to make a bunch of eleven men feel like Sandows was to find out what each of them most wanted to do, and then prevent each from doing it.
Hike was willing to cut out the pie, though he had a sneaking fondness for it. He was willing—that is, nearly willing—to go to bed at eight-thirty. But when it came to having to “rest” all the time, he felt like going on a strike, by himself, and throwing bricks at Captain McDever and the coach. The less they let him plunge into hard practise, the less fit he felt.
Tuesday, two days before the game, was a horrible day. He felt so depressed that he scarcely cheered up at a telegram from General Thorne, announcing that P. J. Jolls and his thugs had been sentenced to long terms in the Federal Penitentiary.
On the Wednesday evening before the game, Hike finally decided he had “rested” so much that he simply wouldn’t be able to play.
“You really might be better if you snook out and took a ride, or something,” Poodle mused, as they sulked, in their room.