When they were back at school Joe proceeded enthusiastically with his skating education. Fortunately there was cold weather from New Year’s Day on and plenty of hard ice. Confidence begets confidence, and Joe progressed, but he would never have thought of trying for hockey if Hal hadn’t suggested it. Hal was on the school team, and so was Bert Madden, and although Bert was rather less insistent than Hal, between them they finally persuaded Joe to try for the position of goal tend with the second team. Joe won the position after a bare fortnight of competition with Mac Torrey. In February he ousted Hendricks from in front of the first team’s cage, for, although Joe was still far from a really good skater, he could keep his feet under him remarkably when defending goal, had an almost miraculous ability to judge shots and stop them and could, and did, fight like a wildcat when his net was assailed. In the first game against Munson he did his share toward keeping the score as low as it was, and, although Holman’s returned to Warrensburg defeated, it was generally acknowledged that Munson’s 14 points might well have been 20 had a less able goal tend than Joe been on the job. And the final Munson contest found Joe working even better under more trying circumstances. Joe, though, was not the real hero of that strange game. The real hero was—but let Alonzo Jones speak.

To be quite frank, I was not pleased when, on returning to Holman’s in September, I found that faculty had put Pender in with me in Number 19 Puffer. Arthur Pugsby and I had arranged, as we believed, for Pug to move down from 32, where he wasn’t quite contented for the reason that the fellow he roomed with, Pete Swanson, wasn’t at all Pug’s sort. Swanson was absolutely all right, you understand, but he and Pug had very little in common, Swanson being rather a sporting chap and Pug caring for the scholarly side of life. Pug and I were extremely sympathetic, sharing many enthusiasms in common, such as Shelley and Keats and Walter Pater; also chess and anagrams. We even had similar tastes in food and drink, both being very fond of pastry and both preferring grape nuts to chopped walnuts on our sundaes. So, of course, we were both disappointed when we found that our plan had fallen through, and that Pug had to remain with an alien spirit like Swanson and that I was doomed to companionship with a stranger, which, of course, Pender then was. But life is filled with disappointments which, however, may frequently be made less poignant by a cheerful fortitude.

My new roommate’s full name was Lamar Scott Pender, and he came from Maristown, Kentucky, where he had been attending a small school called, I believe, the Kentucky Academic Institute. I remember his saying that they had but twenty-eight pupils and thinking that its name was utterly disproportionate to its importance. In age he was my senior by a year, being sixteen and two months, but Pug always maintained that I would impress persons as being older than Pender. I suppose that was because I had always viewed life rather more seriously than most fellows do. I think that gives one an appearance of being older than one really is, don’t you? Pender was much of a gentleman, both in looks and behavior. I had always supposed that southern fellows were dark, but Pender wasn’t. He had sort of chestnut colored hair and a rather fair skin and blue eyes. He explained this by not being born very far south, but I don’t believe he was right about that. He had a taste for athletics, which I had not, but he was not by any means the addict that some fellows were; Swanson for instance. He tried football that fall, but didn’t succeed very well, being dropped from the second team about the last of October. He took his rejection very cheerfully and joined the cross-country squad, and, I believe, did rather well in two or three runs that were held before Christmas vacation.

He entered in my class, upper middle, but he had to work pretty hard to keep up. He confessed that Holman’s was quite a different school from the one he had been attending. I think he would have made better progress had he taken his studies more seriously, but he had what might be called a frivolous propensity and was always looking for fun. We got on very well together after we had become really acquainted, which was probably about the middle of October. Until that time I think both Pug and I sort of held him under observation, as you might put it. Friendship is very sacred and one should be careful in the awarding of it. I don’t think that Pender realized that we were doubtful about him. If he did he never let on. But he was like that. I mean, he never looked very deeply below the surface of things. He saw only the apparent. Lots of times when Pug and I would go off together without inviting him to come along he seemed not to notice it at all, and acted just as if he didn’t care. Even after we had accepted him he never became really one of us. By that I mean that our tastes and his were dissimilar and that he never came to care for the finer things of life, like Literature and the Fine Arts and Classical Music and Philosophical Thought. He was always an outsider, but Pug and I got so we were quite fond of him, being sorry for him at the same time on account of his limitations.

Others accepted him almost at once, but they were the casual sort; fellows who went in for athletics or sang on the Glee Club or just idled their time away in the pursuit of pleasure. Both Pug and I could see that Triangle and P. K. D. began to rush him in November, and if you happen to know those societies you’ll realize that Pender was rather superficial. Neither of us would ever have considered them. Although the fact is immaterial to this narrative, Pender went into Triangle in February, and as that was after the second hockey game with Munson, and as P. K. D. generally got most of the athletic heroes, there was some surprise. But I am far in advance of my story, and will now return to an evening soon after the first of December and proceed in chronological order.

Pug and I were playing chess when Lamar came in and, as was his lamentable habit, tossed his cap on the table so that the snowflakes on it were sprinkled all over the chessboard. I ought, perhaps, to say that by this time he was almost always called “Lamy”, but both Pug and I preferred to address him as Lamar. I remonstrated with him for his carelessness and he laughed and said “Sorry, Jonesy,” and fell into a chair. While my name is, as I think I have neglected to state, Alonzo Jones, I have always objected to being called “Jonesy”, and I had told Lamar so frequently but without result. “Jonesy,” he went on, “have you got any skates?” I shook my head. “You, Pug?” he asked next. Pug also shook his head, scowling at the interruption, the game then being at an interesting and critical stage. Lamar sighed and drummed annoyingly on the table with his fingers. “Well, you know, I’ve got to have a pair, you fellows, and I’m stony broke. After Christmas—”

“Please desist,” I said. “We really can’t put our minds on this when you’re talking.”

Lamar grinned and started to whistle softly. After a minute Pug said: “You win, Lon. Care to try another?” I was about to say yes when Lamar jumped up and lifted the board from between us and tossed it on my bed.

“You really mustn’t,” he said. “You fellows will overwork your brains. Besides, I want to talk.”

Pug was quite sharp with him, but he didn’t seem to mind. He began talking about hockey. It seemed that there had been a call for hockey candidates and he had decided to report the next day. “Of course,” he explained, “there won’t be anything but gymnasium work until after the holidays, and I don’t suppose I can wear skates in the gym, but just the same I’d feel a lot better if I had a pair of the things. It might help me to get the atmosphere, eh?”

I said I didn’t see the necessity, and asked him if he had played much hockey.

“Hockey?” he laughed. “I don’t even know what it’s like! All I do know is that you play it on ice, wearing skates and waving a sort of golf club at a ball.”

“Puck,” corrected Pug, still haughty.

“Come again?”

“I said ‘puck,’” replied Pug. “You don’t use a ball, but a hard rubber disk called a ‘puck.’”

“Oh, I see. Much obliged, Pug. You whack it through a sort of goal, eh?”

“Into a net, to be more exact. Do you skate well?”

Lamar laughed again. “About the way a hen swims,” he said.

“Then your chance of making the hockey team will be small,” answered Pug, with a good deal of satisfaction, I thought.

“Oh, I’ll learn skating. I’ve tried it once or twice. I reckon it’s not so hard, eh?”

Pug smiled ironically. “Possibly it will come easy—to you,” he said.

“Hope so. Anyway, I’m going to have a stab at it. You don’t happen to know where I can borrow some skates, then?”

We didn’t, and Lamar went on talking about hockey until Pug gathered up the chessmen and went off. When he had gone Lamar grinned at me and said: “Corking chap, Pug. So sympathetic.” Then he got his crook-handled umbrella out of the closet and began pushing my glass paper weight about the floor with it, making his feet go as if he was skating, and upset the waste basket and a chair and got the rug all rumpled up.

A couple of days later I asked him how he was getting on with hockey, and he said. “Fine!” He said the candidates hadn’t got the sticks yet; that they were just doing calisthenics. After that he reported progress every day, but we didn’t pay much attention to him, because if we did he would never stop, and neither Pug nor I was interested in hockey. But afterwards I learned that Lamar used to spend hours on the gymnasium floor, outside of practice periods, shooting a puck at a couple of Indian clubs set up to make a goal. There wasn’t any ice before Christmas to speak of, and so the rinks weren’t even flooded.

When Lamar came back after recess he brought a fine pair of hockey skates which his uncle had given him. I said it was funny that his uncle should have known that he wanted skates, but Lamar said it wasn’t funny at all because he had written to him a couple of weeks ahead and told him. I think it was about the tenth of January before the weather got cold enough to make skating possible, but after that the ice stayed right along until the first week in March. Several times Lamar wanted Pug and me to go over to the rink and see practice, but we thought it would be pretty cold work, standing around there in the snow, and we didn’t go until, along in February, there was a mild Saturday and a lot of talk about a game between our team and Warwick Academy. So Pug and I, deciding that some outdoor exercise might be beneficial to us, went over and looked on. We hadn’t intended remaining long, for Pug is subject to colds and I am likely to have chilblains if I stay outdoors much in winter, but as it happened we stayed right through to the end. I was quite surprised to discover that the game could be so interesting, even exciting, from the spectator’s viewpoint, and I fancy Pug was, too. Lamar, who was sitting with a number of other substitutes on a bench, wrapped in a blanket, saw us and came across and explained some of the subtleties of the game. I asked him if he was going to play and he said no, not unless all the others were killed.

Warwick didn’t do very well in the first period of play, only scoring four points to Holman’s seven, but in the next half the visiting team played harder and before long had tied the score at eight all. Our fellows seemed able to skate better than Warwick, but the latter showed more accuracy in putting the disk into the net. Toward the last of the contest Pug and I got quite enthusiastic and frequently joined our voices to the cheers that arose for the Holman’s players. The game was very close at the end, each side alternating in the advantage, and some of the players on both sides played very roughly. It was not at all uncommon to see one player upset another, apparently by intention, and on more than one occasion as many as three fellows would be lying on the ice together. I marvelled that the referee did not penalize such rough behavior, but on comparatively few occasions did he mete out punishment. When there was but a minute or so to play Warwick shot two goals in succession and led, 15 to 13. Then Madden, who was one of our best players, got the puck away from the enemy behind their goal and took it unaided the full length of the rink and sent it between the feet of the fellow who was on guard at the net. It seemed to me that Madden was guilty of questionable tactics when he pretended to pass the disk to MacLean just before he reached the Warwick goal. That deceived the goal tender, I judged, into shifting his position to the left and made Madden’s shot possible. Lamar, however, declared later that that was part of the game. Anyway, while it gave our side another tally, it did not lead to winning the contest, and I could not help but feeling, in spite of Lamar’s statement, that poetic justice had been done. I pointed this out to Pug on the way back to Puffer, but Pug was very disappointed because Holman’s had not won the game, and told me between sneezes that I was deficient in patriotism. Pug had a very bad cold for several days following his exposure and so we did not attend another hockey game for almost a fortnight.

That Saturday night Lamar was very full of the game and I was quite patient with him and allowed him to talk about it as much as he liked. He told me why our side had not won. It seemed that much of the blame lay with the referee, who had never failed to note transgressions of the rules by Holman’s players but had invariably been blind to similar lapses on the part of the enemy. It seemed, also, that the referee had been far too strict in the matter of “off-side.” Lamar explained to me what “off-side” meant, but it was never very clear in my mind. I asked him what game he expected to play in and he shook his head and said glumly that he guessed he’d never get in any of them.

“You see, Jonesy,” he went on, “the trouble with me is that I’m no skater. Oh, I can keep on my feet and get over the ice after a fashion, but I’m not in the same class with MacLean and Madden and Norwin and half a dozen others. Those sharks can speed up to ninety miles an hour, turn around on a dime and stop like a .22 short hitting a dreadnaught. I can shoot, Jonesy, if I do say it as shouldn’t. Even MacLean says that. I can lift the old rubber in from any angle. When it comes to skating, though, I—well, I’m just not there.”

“With practice,” I began.

“Oh, sure, but where do I practice? The only ice within four miles is the rink. Besides, what I need is about three years of it! Down in Kentucky we don’t have much good skating, and, anyway, there isn’t any ice around where I live. I thought it was easy, but it isn’t. I’d give—gee, I’d give anything ’most to be able to skate like Hop MacLean!”

“Still, if you can shoot the—the puck so well—”

“That doesn’t get me anything,” he answered gloomily. “You can’t shoot unless you’re on the ice, and they won’t let me on, except to practice. Hop says that when they change the hockey rules so as to let you play the puck sitting down or spinning on your head I’ll be one of the finest players in captivity. But, he says, until they do I’m not much use. If he wasn’t such a corking chap he’d have dropped me weeks ago. I reckon I could play goal, but that fellow Kenton has that cinched.”

“Too bad,” I said, “but possibly next year—”

“Sure, but it’s this year I’m worrying about. I got canned as a football player, I never could play baseball, and so, if I don’t get my letter at hockey I reckon I’m dished.”

“You did very well, I understand at cross-country running,” I suggested.

“Fair, for a new hand, but you don’t get your letter that way. Of course, I may manage to get on the track team as a distance runner, but I hate to depend on it.”

“Possibly you are setting too great a store on getting your letter,” I said. “Quite a few fellows get through school without it, and I don’t believe the fact prevents them from—”

“Bunk,” said Lamar. “You don’t get it, Jonesy. It’s Uncle Lucius I’m worrying about.”

“Is he the uncle who gave you the skates?” I asked.

“Yes. He’s good for anything in the athletic line. He’s nuts on sports of any kind. Hunts, fishes, plays polo, rides to hounds. It was he who sent me here, and he as much as told me that if I didn’t make good this year I’d have to hustle for myself next. And that means I couldn’t come back, for dad can’t afford the price.”

“I must say,” I replied indignantly, “that your Uncle Lucius has most peculiar ideas!”

“Maybe, but he has ’em,” said Lamar grimly. “And that’s why it means something to me to make this hockey team. Or it did mean something: I reckon I might as well quit hoping.”