The Second Team started its training table Monday. The First had done so a week earlier. The tables, each accommodating eighteen persons, occupied the two farther corners of the dining-hall. That of the First Team was given a certain degree of privacy by two oak screens similar to the one that stood before the door leading to the pantry, but the Second Team consumed its meals in full view of the world. Joining the training table, Toby discovered, added no luxuries to your menu. Rather, it did quite otherwise, for pastry and puddings, save for one or two very simple concoctions, were sternly barred. You got rather more beef and lamb—too underdone to please Toby—and eggs were a drug on the market. Potatoes were served sparingly and only in the baked condition. On the whole, there was a notable monotony to the training table fare, but as the fellows were generally extremely hungry that didn’t trouble them greatly.

Toby’s presence at the Second Team board was somewhat of a surprise to Toby, since, as there were places for only seventeen players,—Coach Burtis sat at the head of the table,—it seemed to him that he was displacing more deserving talent. Why he should be there and Stair and Bird not there, was a conundrum, a conundrum that was partly answered for him that Monday afternoon.

“You’re on B Team, Tucker,” announced Mr. Burtis when, at four o’clock, the players were called back to the bench. “Show me what you’ve learned the last week. You’ll have Lippman at half and I want you to use him whenever you can. Play him hard. He will stand it. And don’t neglect your kicking game just because your punters aren’t the best. The only way for them to learn is to have it to do. Keep to simple plays; B Team doesn’t know anything complicated; and speed it up all you know how.”

“Y-yes, sir,” agreed Toby. Then he shed his blanket and wondered whether he had learned anything the last week, and if he had what it was! However, it wouldn’t do to let either the coach or the players guess the trepidation he felt, and so he pulled on his head-guard quite snappily and limbered up his legs, as, he judged, was the approved thing to do, and looked as smiling and care-free as possible. Then the two teams trotted out, A with the ball, and Gyp blew a whistle and his troubles had begun.

But, after all, the troubles weren’t so many, nor so formidable. He made mistakes, and he shared in a perfectly ghastly fumble on A’s twenty-six yards, and twice he got his signals so badly mixed that the whole team howled at him. But, on the other hand, he put vim into his fellows and followed the coach’s directions regarding Lippman and the kicking game and the use of simple plays, and before the period had ended he had the exquisite pleasure of watching the pigskin skin the enemy’s cross-bar for a three-point tally. He could have wept tears of joy on Crawford’s neck for that thirty-yard drop-kick, and A Team’s sullen resentment was an added delight. But B had to pay for her cheekiness. Already A had scored a touchdown, and now, bitterly resentful, she set to work to wreak vengeance. And she did it finally, for three long runs by Nelson and White took the ball back to B’s thirty-five yards and White plugged along for another down through a crumbling right side in spite of Toby’s shrill exhortations, and Stover banged into Sid Creel, at center, and piled through to the eighteen. Toby was very glad when time was called for Sid’s recovery, for B was on the run and becoming more disorganized each moment. He spent a precious two minutes ranging the line and “talking Dutch,” and when Sid, looking vague and dizzy, shuffled into his position again there was a perceptible stiffening of the defense. But it couldn’t last against A’s battering-ram tactics, and presently it was crumbling again. Short gains but steady, and B was on her last white line, and it was second down and every one was shouting or grunting. Toby gritted his teeth and danced about and hurled defiance across the bent backs before him, all the time trying with the intensity of despair to guess the play that was coming. He did guess, but he guessed wrong, and Nelson shot unexpectedly outside right tackle, straight for the center of the goal, and the only satisfaction Toby got was in sitting on Nelson’s head after he had been pulled down by Crawford. Bowen grinned miserably, and every B Team fellow was very, very careful not so much as to look at him; for Bowen was right tackle and had been most ingloriously eliminated. After that the horn squawked and the half was over.

Toby and several others who had played through the whole twelve minutes were dismissed to the showers, although all would have preferred staying and watching the second half. Instead, they argued hotly all the way up to the gymnasium—the two teams being very equally represented—and still argued, though with diminished heat, while the showers hissed. Toby was secretly rather well satisfied with his performance that afternoon until, later, he learned that B Team, under Roy Frick’s generalship, had actually scored a touchdown in the last period of play!

On Tuesday, after a half-hour of light practice, the Second trotted over to the First Team field and, before a large and interested audience, was badly mauled and beaten. Frick and Rawson played quarter through two twelve-minute halves, and Toby and Stair—Bird, it seemed, had retired to private life—sat on the bench and watched and worried, trying to believe that things would have gone no better for the Second if they had taken part. Second used most of her substitutes in a vain effort to stave off, not defeat, for that was inevitable, but dishonor, and could make nothing of it. First Team piled up the scores with a merciless and monotonous succession and the audience yawned and drifted away.

“What’s that?” asked Lou Stair drearily. “Twenty-three?”

“Twenty-six,” answered Toby glumly.

“Gee-jiminy-gosh!” groaned Stair. “Say, what’s the matter with the Second, anyway? What’s got into ’em, Tucker! Look at Smith, will you? Why doesn’t he get down? Why doesn’t Frick get after him? He thinks he’s a skyscraper! And there goes Dawson off-side again! Gee, our bunch is playing like sand-lot kids! Well, he got away with it, and that’s something!”

“What of it?” asked Toby dully. “We didn’t make enough to plant a row of beans on! That’s third. White’ll have to punt.”

“Yeah, as much as ten yards!” jeered Stair. “What’d I tell you? Guess he’s got a friend on the side-line, the way he kicked the ball there! Well, here’s where First scores again!”

And presently First did that very thing, Toby’s gloom being slightly relieved by the fact that it was Arnold who took the ball over by a slashing run from the Second’s eighteen yards. Gloom enveloped the whole blanketed line of watchers that second half, for they had been doing a good deal of talking as to what was to happen to the First Team when they tried conclusions. In fact, Second had even gone so far as to hint that the real reason Coach Lyle hadn’t let his team face the Second before was his fear of a disastrous defeat. Toby wondered how Coach Burtis, pacing tranquilly to and fro along the side-line, his hands buried in his trousers pockets, could maintain his expression of unconcern in the face of such direful happenings! Toby would have felt a heap better if Mr. Burtis had scowled or kicked at a pebble or shown distress in some other manner. The coach’s unruffled demeanor seemed to Toby to smack of treason! He was very glad when that farcical game came to an end with a final score of 33 to 0.

Second, fagged, disheveled, outraged, climbed a weary path to the gymnasium, muttering threats of vengeance; hearing which Coach Burtis smiled a secret smile of satisfaction. Toby felt quite disgraced until the lapse of an hour or two brought a realization of the fact that such things had happened before and would happen again, and that no one took them very seriously. At supper Mr. Burtis ate quite as much as usual and with as much enjoyment, and talked and jested in his accustomed manner; which encouraged Toby to satisfy a really ravenous hunger. After a steak and a baked potato and the usual trimmings he found that he could view the afternoon’s Waterloo with equanimity. There was, he reflected, another day coming!

Wednesday found Toby learning A Team signals, his allegiance transferred to that squad by order of the coach. In the scrimmage Rawson led B Team and Toby adorned the bench until near the end of the second half. Then Frick came out and Toby went in and received an evil and portentous wink from Sid Creel. That wink said very plainly: “You wait till I get at you, you renegade!” Just at first it was a bit disconcerting to find himself slamming into his former teammates and to realize that they not only no longer loved him but were eager to grind his face in the earth and otherwise degrade him! Before the game was over, though, he had very effectually forgotten the old ties and was glorying in every foot of territory conquered by A Team. It was remarkable what a healthy antagonism existed between the two squads. Before the scrimmage they were all Second Team fellows, and afterwards, in the locker-room, they fraternized nicely, but while the game lasted they were enemies and aliens, and neither side asked quarter. Toby, during a busy six or seven minutes of play that afternoon, was rather rudely handled by his former comrades, and made his way up the hill with a ruddy nose and several assorted contusions. But he had the satisfaction of a touchdown and a brief word of commendation from Coach Burtis; and nothing else much mattered.

Thursday they went against the First again and, while they were once more decisively trimmed, they made a far better showing. Toby got in for the whole of the second half and, after recovering from a bad attack of stage fright, gave a fairly good account of himself. Toby wasn’t one to seek personal glory, and there were times when he might have taken the ball himself and didn’t. He did get off one good twenty-yard sprint with the pigskin clasped in the cradle of his elbow, and got a hearty thump on his back from Arnold as he trotted by that member of the enemy forces and a rousing acclaim from the stands. But for the rest Toby stayed modestly in position, letting Nelson and White and, less frequently, Stover, perform the back-field stunts—or try to. First Team was fast rounding into a hard-working, aggressive, snappy organization, and facing her was no child’s play. That the Second held her to four scores that day, and credited herself with a field-goal, speaks well for Coach Burtis’ charges. Second didn’t consider that she had actually wiped out the stigma of Tuesday’s overwhelming defeat, but she derived a lot of comfort from her showing, and White, whose capable foot had secured that goal from the field, was a twenty-four hour hero. It was even whispered that Coach Lyle had been seen looking hard at White and that the latter’s transfer to the First Team was inevitable. Which, while it may have brought pleasant anticipations to the Second Team while full-back, filled the rest of the fellows with gloomy forebodings.

“That’s the way they do,” lamented Farquhar, the rangy left tackle. “Just as soon as we get a fellow so’s he’s some use to us they nab him for the First. What’s the use of that? If they want us to give ’em good practice they ought to let us have some decent players. But they don’t. Last year they swiped three of our fellows two weeks before the Broadwood game. They make me very weary!”

However, it seemed that Second’s fears might be groundless, for Friday found White still with them, and he was still with them the following day when the First went up against Forest Hill School.