“How are you, Dick?” said Seeley, with an unusual smile which singularly brightened his face. “You don’t look a day older than when I last saw you. Still cutting coupons for a living?”
“Oh, money is the least of my worries,” gayly rattled Mr. Giddings. “Been doing the heavy society act to-night, and on my way home found I needed some sauerkraut and beer to tone up my jaded system. By Jove, Harry, you’re as gray as a badger. This newspaper game must be bad for the nerves. Lots of fellows have asked me about you. Never see you at the University Club, nobody sees you anywhere. Remarkable how a man can lose himself right here in New York. Still running the Chronicle, I suppose.”
“I’m still in the old shop, Dick,” replied Seeley, glad to be rid of this awkward question. “But I work nearly all night and sleep most of the day, and am like a cog in a big machine that never stops grinding.”
“Shouldn’t do it. Wears a man out,” and Mr. Giddings sagely nodded his head. “Course you are going up to the game to-day. Come along with me. Special car with a big bunch of your old pals inside. They’ll be tickled to death to find I’ve dug you out of your hole. Hello! Is that this morning’s paper? Let me look at the sporting page. Great team at New Haven, they tell me. What’s the latest odds? I put up a thousand at five to three last week and am looking for some more easy money.”
The alert eye of the volatile Richard Giddings swept down the New Haven dispatch like lightning.
With a grievous outcry he smote the table and shouted:
“Collins out of the game? Great Scott, Harry, that’s awful news. And a green Freshman going to fill his shoes at the last minute. I feel like weeping, honest I do. Who the deuce is this Seeley? Any kin of yours? I suppose not or you would have bellowed it at me before this.”
“He is my only boy, Dick,” and the father held up his head with a shadow of his old manner. “I didn’t know he had the ghost of a show to make the team until I saw this dispatch.”
“Then, of course, you are coming up with me,” roared Mr. Giddings. “I hope he’s a chip of the old block. If he has your sand they can’t stop him. Jumping Jupiter, they couldn’t have stopped you with an axe when you were playing guard in our time, Harry. I feel better already to know that it is your kid going in at full-back to-day.”