As Deacon stood watching the freshmen at play, Dick Rollins, the crew captain, came up.
"They sent down the time-trial results from the Shelburne quarters,
Deacon."
Never in his life had one of the great men of the university spoken that many words, or half as many, to Jim Deacon, who stared at the speaker.
"The time—oh, yes; I see."
"They did twenty minutes, thirty seconds."
Deacon whistled.
"Well," he said at length, "you didn't get the boat moving much to-day." He wanted to say more, but could think of nothing. Words came rather hard with him.
"You nearly lugged the second shell ahead of us to-day, hang you."
"No use letting a patient die because he doesn't know he's sick."
Rollins grimaced.