Dick’s home letters became shorter about this time. Life was very busy for him. He wrote the news, but he no longer indulged his pen in descriptions. Sumner White had written twice from Leonardville, rather long letters about the High School Team, with messages from Dick’s former schoolmates and questions about Parkinson football methods. Sumner’s faith in Dick remained unimpaired, although the latter had still to announce his acceptance on the Parkinson First Team. “We are all expecting big things from you, Dick old scout,” wrote Sumner in his latest epistle. “Cal Lensen is going to get the Parkinson weekly to exchange with the Argus so he can keep tabs on you. So just remember that we’re watching you, kid! Every time you make a touchdown for Parkinson the old Argus will have a full and graphic account of it in the next number. But you’d better write now and then, besides. Good luck to you, Dick, and that goes for all the ‘gang.’”

It wasn’t very easy to answer Sumner’s letters because answering involved explaining why he hadn’t made the team. But Dick did answer them. The following Sunday he wrote: “Got your letter Tuesday, but saved it for today because Sunday’s about the only day a fellow has time here for writing letters. Glad to get the news about everyone, but very sorry to hear of the Chester game. But you fellows must remember that Chester has the edge on you, anyway. Look at their coach and all the money they spend and all that! Besides, 19-6 isn’t as bad as we licked them two years ago. I guess you’ll have to find someone for Mercer’s place. Ed tries hard, but he isn’t scrappy enough for full-back. You need a fellow who isn’t afraid of a stone wall and doesn’t get hurt the way Ed did all last year. What about Cleary? He’s slow, I know, but you might speed him up this year, and he has lots of fight.... Things here are humming along finely. We played Musket Hill yesterday and just walked away with them. I told you I didn’t fancy Driscoll, the coach, but I like him better, and I guess he does know how to get the stuff out of a team. Talking about full-backs, I wish you could see our man here in action. His name’s Kirkendall and he comes from Kentucky. The fellows call him ‘K of K.’, or just ‘K’ sometimes. Well, he got started yesterday in the third period on our forty and Stone (quarter) fed him the ball eight times and he landed it on N. H.’s seven yards, and he’d have taken it over, too, if Stone hadn’t acted the silly goat and switched to Warden. It took Warden and Gaines both to get it over then, but they did it. Only it seemed too bad not to let K. get the credit for the touchdown after smashing all the way for fifty yards. Stone doesn’t use his head, it seems to me. But he does play a good individual game. For all-round work, though, our captain, Bob Peters, is the star of the team. He plays right end, and he’s a wonder at it. Talk about getting down under punts! Gee, Sum, he’s under the ball from the minute it’s kicked, and he seems to always know just where it’s going, too. But he’s just as good on defence, and the way he handled the opposing tackle yesterday was a marvel. He’s a dandy captain, too, for all the fellows swear by him and would do anything he asked them to, I guess.

“I’m still pegging along on the outside, and maybe I won’t make the team this year. There are nearly five hundred students here and a lot of them are corking football players and a fellow has got to be mighty good to even get looked at by the coach. So you mustn’t be surprised if you don’t see my name in the Leader this year. Of course it’s early yet, and I might have luck, but I’m not counting on it much. I’m having a good time, though. Some of the football chaps are corkers, big fellows, you know. I mean big every way, not only in size. They’re big enough in size, though, believe me, Sum. Gee, I was certainly surprised when I saw how the team stacked up. Why, Newhall, the right guard, must weigh two hundred pounds, and Cupp isn’t any light-weight either. Another thing I was surprised at was the way they go at football here. Everything’s all arranged and cut out six months ahead and it’s the most business-like proposition I ever saw. There’s an Athletic Committee first, composed of three faculty and two students, the football and baseball managers usually. Then there’s the Head Coach, and under him the trainer and his assistant. The committee meets every week and then there’s a meeting in the coach’s room every night but Sunday and everything is threshed out and plans made for the next day. There doesn’t seem to be a moment wasted here. Just at first I thought it was too professional or something, but I guess it’s just being efficient. It works all right, anyway. Well, I must stop and go over to see a fellow in the village with Stan. I’ll tell you about that fellow some time. He’s a wonder! Remember me to everyone and think over what I wrote about Leary. I forgot to tell you the score yesterday. It was 27-3. Some game, eh?”

Dick might have written a little more truthfully that he wasn’t counting at all on making the First Team, for at the end of the first fortnight at Parkinson it was pretty evident to him that he had still some distance to go before he would reach the proficiency of fellows like Peters and Kirkendall and Warden and several more. The fact that he had loomed up as an uncommonly good quarter-back at Leonardville High School, and that the town papers had hailed him as a star of the first magnitude, didn’t mean much to him here. He saw that Parkinson and Leonardville standards were widely apart. Why, there were fellows on the Second Team here who were better than anything Leonardville had ever seen! But Dick took his disappointment philosophically. He meant to try very hard for a place on the big eleven, no matter how humble it might be, and so get in line for next year. He wondered sometimes if he wouldn’t have shown himself wiser had he gone out for the Second Team instead. There was still time for that, for very often candidates released from the First Team squad went to the Second and made good, but somehow he didn’t like the idea of trying for the moon and being satisfied with a jack-o’-lantern! No, he decided, if he failed at the First he would quit for that year and try all the harder next. Rumors of a first cut were about on the Monday following the Musket Hill game, and Dick prepared for retirement to private life. The cut didn’t come, however, until Thursday, and when it did come it passed Dick by. Why, he couldn’t make out. Fellows like Macomber and Swift and Teasdale disappeared and Dick remained. And Macomber and the others were, in Dick’s estimation, much better players than he. But he accepted his good fortune and went on trying very hard to make good, telling himself all the time that the next cut would take him, certainly.

But if Dick’s success at football was in a measure disappointing, his faculty for making friends had not deserted him. He had acquired many by the end of the first fortnight at school. Of course, they were not all close friends, but they were more than mere acquaintances. Among the close friends he counted Stanley first. Then came Blash and Sid and Rusty. His liking for Blash—and Blash’s for him—seemed to have started after the episode of the telephone call. Because Dick had fooled Blash and Blash had taken it smilingly seemed no good reason for an increase of friendship, but there it was! Blash still threatened to get even some day, and Dick was certain that he would, but that only made the mutual liking stronger. As between Sid Crocker and Rusty Crozier, Dick would have had trouble saying which he liked the better. Rusty was far more amusing, but Sid was a dependable sort of chap. In trouble, Dick would have thought first of Sid. Oddly enough, Dick’s popularity was greater amongst fellows older than he. Each of those whom he counted real friends was at least a year his senior, and Harry Warden, with whom acquaintanceship was fast warming into friendship, was nearly two years older. But the disparity in age was not greatly apparent, for Dick had the growth and manners of eighteen rather than seventeen, and one who didn’t know the truth might well have thought him as old as either Stanley or Rusty.

Of enemies, so far as he knew, Dick had made but one. Sanford Halden allowed no opportunity to remind Dick of his enmity to get past him. He had been among those dropped from the First Team squad in that first cut and it appeared that he somehow managed to hold Dick to blame for that. When they passed in hall or on campus Sandy always had a malevolent scowl for him, and once or twice Dick thought he even heard mutters! All this Dick found mildly amusing. Sandy reminded him of a villain in a cheap melodrama. A few days after the cut Dick heard that Sandy had attached himself to the Second Nine for fall practice.

Football took up a great deal of Dick’s time and much of his thought, but he managed to maintain an excellent standing in each of his courses and thus won the liking of most of the instructors with whom he came in contact. With Mr. Matthews, who was Dick’s advisor, he was soon on close terms of intimacy. The instructor was one of the younger faculty members, a man with a sympathetic understanding of boys, and tastes that included most of the things that boys liked. He had a passion for athletics and was one of the Nine’s most unflagging rooters. But for all this he was not generally liked. The younger boys, who formed most of his classes, were suspicious of his fashion of regarding them individually instead of as a whole. They declared, some of them at least, that he “crowded” them. By which, in school parlance, was meant that he tried to be too friendly. They resented his attempts to interest himself in their doings outside classes. Among the older boys, however, he was a prime favourite, and his study in Williams was the scene of Friday evening “parties” that were always well attended. Anyone was welcome. There was much talk, the subjects ranging from the value of the “spitball” in pitching to the influence of Bible study on literary style. At nine o’clock ginger ale and cookies—the latter especially made by a woman in the town and transferred each Friday from her house to the school in a laundry box by Mr. Matthews—were served. Perhaps some of the guests were present more on account of the ginger ale and molasses cookies than for any other reason, for the cookies had long since gained a wide fame, but none questioned their motives.

Stanley and Dick attended one of the parties the Friday following the Musket Hill game. There were more than a dozen fellows already in the room when they arrived, most of whom Stanley knew and a few of whom were known to Dick. All the usual seating accommodation being exhausted, the instructor had dragged his bed to the door of the adjoining room, and on the edge of that the newcomers found places, they and a spectacled youth named Timmins completely filling the doorway. Conversation was still general. Mr. Matthews, dropping a word now and then into the noisy confusion, was at his study table cutting sheets of paper into quarters with a pair of shears. He wasn’t a bit impressive, being under rather than over medium height and slight of build. He had light hair that was already thin over the forehead, bluish eyes and light lashes, all of which gave him a somewhat colourless appearance. But there was an inquiring tilt to the short nose, a humorous droop at the corners of the mouth and a very determined protrusion of the chin that lent interest to the countenance.

The study was a comfortable sort of place. The woodwork was painted mahogany brown and there was a lightish buff paper on the walls and many books in the low cases and a few really good engravings above. The furniture was old, rather dilapidated and most friendly. Even the chairs whose backs were straightest and whose seats looked most uncompromising had acquired unsuspected and hospitable curves. There was a deep red rug, rather a good rug it was if you knew anything about Mousuls, and a “saddle-bag” was stretched along the window-seat. Just now the latter was hidden by four of the guests.

Mr. Matthews dropped the shears and rapped for attention. “Before we settle the affairs of nations, fellows, as is our weekly custom,” he announced in his pleasant and somewhat precise voice, “I propose that we spend a half-hour in mere recreation. This particular form of recreation is not original with me. I ran across it in the summer. Half a dozen of us were trying to live through the third day of a northeast storm down on the Maine coast. We’d exhausted every known means of staving off imbecility when one of the party, he happened to be a clergyman, by the way, introduced—should I say ‘sprung,’ Harris?—sprung this on us. ‘There are three things,’ he said, ‘that every man firmly believes he can do. One is run a hotel, another is conduct a newspaper and the third is write poetry.’ He proposed that we should write poetry. We tried, and the results, if not calculated to win us undying fame, were at least amusing. Suppose, then, we try the same stunt this evening. Here are some pencils and two fountain pens. You are respectfully requested to leave the pens behind when you go out. The pencils I leave to your consciences. And here are some sheets of paper. Ford, would you mind distributing to those behind you? And you, McEwen? Thank you. Now the idea is to choose the surname of one of the party and write a two-line verse, the first line ending with the—er—victim’s name. Want to try it?”

“Yes, sir!” “We’ll try anything once!” “My middle name is Tennyson, Mr. Matthews!”

“All right. And for the one who writes what is voted to be the best effusion, there is a prize concealed in this drawer here.”

Loud applause from the assemblage, and an inquiry from the window-seat: “Please may we see it first, sir?”, followed by more applause and laughter.

“Sorry, Neal, but the prize is not to be seen until won. I want you to really try! To illustrate the style of composition to be followed, I give you this, gentlemen, craving your indulgence. It is one of my attempts on the occasion mentioned. I ran across it the other day and it gave me the idea of trying the game this evening. In explanation I may say that the gentleman mentioned was a super-excellent golf player and very, very thin as to body.

The rhyme is obviously of the licensed sort! But you get the idea, don’t you? Now, let’s select a name. Which shall we start with?”

“Ford, sir. That’s easy,” someone suggested.

“Very well. Three minutes is allowed. When the time is up I’ll call ‘Time’ and you will at once stop. Ready? Everyone supplied with pencil and paper?”

“All set!” “Let ’er go, sir!”

“Now!” said Mr. Matthews, his eyes on his watch. The laughter was stilled and fifteen pens or pencils were poised over as many sheets of paper. Then mutters arose and feet shuffled. “Say, what rhymes with ‘Ford’?” asked Timmins of Stanley in an audible whisper. Chuckles arose and De Vitt answered, “‘Flivver,’ Tim!” Dick was still struggling when the time was up and his second line was lacking a rhyme.

“Now we will read the results in turn,” said Mr. Matthews. “Suppose you begin, Harris.”

“Not prepared, sir,” answered “Tip” Harris.

Three others answered to the same effect and it was Cashin who bashfully produced the first composition, as follows:

“Ingenious,” commented Mr. Matthews, when the laughter had stopped, “but rather a libel on Ford. You’re next, Elders.”

“I didn’t get mine done, sir. I think your watch was fast!”

“How about you, Gard?”

“Guess you might as well open that drawer, sir!” And Stanley read:

That won much applause, for Ford, whose appellation of “Goody,” derived from his given name of Goodman, was no indication of his behaviour, had scorned to take part in the competition. Two other verses were read and then a second name was chosen. This time it was Cashin, and nearly everyone turned in something. The best of them, if applause was any indication, was Neal’s:

“That rhyme requires a license, too, Neal,” laughed Mr. Matthews. “I might say, fellows, that it isn’t absolutely necessary to ‘knock’!”

“No, sir,” agreed De Vitt, “but it’s easier!”

Which rejoinder brought De Vitt into the limelight, and his name was tried next. Gerald De Vitt was editor-in-chief of the school weekly, The Leader, a likable fellow who took himself a bit seriously, who wrote long, sensible and very dull editorials, and who mistakenly conducted a column of allegedly humorous matter that was the despair of his friends. Consequently when Stanley read his production the howl of laughter that arose held as much applause as amusement.

Later someone suggested trying “Matthews” and there were many dismal failures and just one quasi-success. The latter was Dick’s.

In the end it was Stanley’s couplet on De Vitt that was voted the prize and Mr. Matthews gravely opened the desk drawer and as gravely presented the fortunate contestant with a large red apple! It was quite the largest apple any of them had ever seen, and, while it was passed around, the instructor explained that it was one of a plate of prize-winners at the County Fair. At Stanley’s request a knife was produced and the apple was divided into sixteen pieces and distributed. Mr. Matthews brought out the “spread” and for an hour longer the gathering munched delectable cookies and drank ginger ale and talked. On the whole, the occasion was a very enjoyable one, and Dick determined that hereafter his Friday evenings should be spent in Number 2 Williams. And, although he missed a “party” now and then, he kept that promise to himself fairly well.