"Wearing grandmother's ducks. That is just all they know about such things, the chaps who write novels. No amount of ladies' eyes or wearing apparel ever pulled Sir Launcelot through a mill, if he wasn't properly trained for it."
"You have no poetry in your soul, you old monk; your heart is as hard as your muscles," replied Hollis, smiling. "Wait until you get an arrow yourself, and see what a spirit it will put in you. Why, you will conquer anything."
"That is all nonsense," declared Bender. "Every man on that crew will pull his best, anyway, don't you be afraid about that; but his best won't amount to much if he spends all his time worrying about some pink and white girl. I think I know the symptoms of the disease now, and what is more I think Charlie Rivers has it. Thank goodness he sticks to his beef yet, and seems to pull as strong an oar as ever; but there is something wrong. He used to be the jolliest old cock in college, and bright and quick as a steel trap. Now he hardly talks at all at the training table, and when he does make a joke it is usually stupid. You're his room-mate and best friend, and you must know what is up. Of course I don't ask you to betray any confidence, and if he has been spilling over to you, you are quite right in telling me that it is none of my business. But if you have diagnosed his case for yourself, I wish you would tell me frankly what you think about it."
"If Charlie is in love he has never told me so," Holworthy answered rather evasively. "I do know, however, that he has had a great many things to depress him. His father died last winter, you remember, and of course that was enough to make him blue. Then he has very little money, and is uncertain about getting any sort of a good job when he graduates, and he is worrying over that. He will probably brace up after a while. I hope you won't fire him off the crew, for it would break his heart."
"Well, you know, Holly, it would break mine too," said Bender. "Charlie has always played in awfully hard luck, and he certainly deserves another chance to win his oar, and a red one at that; but, of course, I can't keep him in the boat out of personal friendship and admiration, if he is not fit to row. I don't think there is any danger of that yet, however. He is still the prettiest oar I have ever seen, and surely no one could work more conscientiously."
"He is a great deal too conscientious. It would do him good to break training once in a while," asserted Hollis. "You ought to let a man in his condition smoke, anyway."
"I don't know about that," objected the Tory oarsman. "I hope you will do your best to cheer him up, though; and, especially, if you find out that any girl has got him on a string, talk him out of it and clear his mind."
"Oh, thou untamed Hercules," replied Holworthy, laughing at this last simple request. "I suppose you think you could snap such a string as you can an oar. When Omphale ties you up in her yarn, you won't find it so easy to break."
"Well, I hope old Rivers is not snarled up in any such tackle," said Bender, as he rose to go. "After all, though, I believe I would rather have him in the middle of the boat than any other man in the University,—even if he were in love with twenty girls." And with this acknowledgment in spite of such Mohammedan possibilities, Billy Bender went off to the river.
As Bender had said, Charles Rivers had been "playing in hard luck." Though a splendid oarsman he had never won a race. In his Freshman year he had been taken out of his class crew to be a substitute for the University eight. The next year he rowed No. 4 on the 'Varsity; but Yale won. He filled the same place all through his Junior year, until a week before the race, when he sprained his heel and had to sit in the referee's launch and watch his comrades get their revenge on the Blue. This year was his last, and he had begun training, even with the new men, before Christmas.