The other lads gave it up.
“A hopeless case,” murmured Ned, shaking his head sadly.
“Yes,” mourned Fred. “And he used to be such a nice fellow, too, before he went bughouse.”
“You rough necks are jealous,” grinned Tom. “You’d have tried to discourage Shakespeare, if you’d been living then.
“Lucky for the world, you weren’t living then,” he went on. “For that matter you’re not living now. You’re dead ones, but you don’t know it.”
They were still trying to think up a sufficiently cutting response when they came in sight of the football field.
It was an animated scene. A dozen or more boys in their football togs were running over the field, while many more crowded round the side lines as spectators. There was a dummy, at which some of the players were throwing themselves in turn to get tackling practice. Others were running down under punts, and still others were getting instructions in the forward pass.
The game with the Lake Forest School, one of their principal rivals, was now only two weeks off, and the boys were working for dear life to get into form. They had a good team, although three of their best players of the year before had not returned to school this fall.
Teddy was a little too light for the heavy work required in football, although he would have made a good quarter-back, where quickness is more necessary than weight. But that position was already filled by Billy Burton, who was doing capital work, so that there seemed no opening for Teddy. He consoled himself by the determination to make the shortstop position on the baseball team the following spring.
But Fred was husky enough to fill any position, either in the line or the back field, and he had been picked out by Melvin Granger as a “comer.”