Practice this first afternoon wasn’t a serious ordeal, for much time was given to verbal instruction, and at half-past four the squads were dismissed. Willard, walking back to the gymnasium with Martin and Bob, said that it ought to be easy to get a good team with such a raft of candidates to choose from, and Bob snorted derisively.
“You’re wrong, Brand,” he said. “If we had half as many we’d get on better. It takes three weeks, nearly, to find out who’s good and to weed out the others, and that’s just so much time lost. Johnny’s dippy on the subject of having every fellow who ever heard of football come out, and it’s a sad mess for the first fortnight. Of course it sometimes happens that he finds a player that way who mightn’t show up if he wasn’t urged to, but, gee, I think it’s piffle! Give me last year’s first and second teams, or what’s left of ’em, and a dozen chaps who have made names where they come from and I’ll turn out as good a team as any. Must have been a hundred fellows out there this afternoon, and I’ll bet you fifty of them never played a game of football in their lives!”
“Sure,” agreed Martin, “but some of them are capable of playing, you poor fish, and it’s just those that Johnny wants to find. If they don’t make good this year, he’s got them started for next. Your plan might work all right this year, Bob, but you’d run short of material next year. You’ve got to plan ahead, old son, and that’s what Johnny does.”
“Are there many of last season’s fellows left?” asked Willard.
“Six first-string chaps,” answered Bob. “Joe, Stacey Ross, Jack Macon, Gil Tarver, Arn Lake and myself. There is quite a bunch of good last year subs and second team fellows, though. And then there’s Mart!”
“Yes, and Mart’s going to try for something besides guard position this year,” remarked that youth. “With you and Joe holding down each side of center there’s no hope for me. Last season I lived in hope that Joe would get killed or that you’d be fired, but nothing happened. This thing of waiting around for dead men’s shoes is dull work!”
“What are you going after?” laughed Bob.
“I don’t know,” replied Martin discouragedly. “How’d I do as a full-back?”
“Great! Say, Mart, do something for me, will you? Go and tell Johnny to let you play full-back!”
“Oh, dry up, you big ape! I could play full-back as well as Steve Browne can.”
“Steve hasn’t a chance!”
“Who, then?”
“Search me! We’ve got to find someone. Steve’s a good chap, but he hasn’t the weight, speed, or fight for full-back. If we could buy Brand’s brother out of the Navy, now – ”
“Well, you did your best,” laughed Martin. “You got the right bag, but the wrong boy! Look here, Brand – ”
“I refuse to answer to that name,” said Willard haughtily.
“What’s the matter with it? It’s a perfectly good name. What I was about to say when so rudely interrupted – ”
“What I was about to say,” interjected Bob, “is that it would be a good plan to hurry up a bit and get ahead of some of this mob. If we don’t we’ll be waiting around until supper time for a shower!”
“Come on, then: stir your stumps, slow poke! I was going to say, Brand, that it’s your duty to either fill the full-back position yourself or find someone to fill it. You were – admitted to Alton on your representation that you were a full-back – ”
“‘Admitted’ is good!” jeered Willard.
“And you aren’t,” Martin proceeded, unheeding the interruption. “Fellows are asking Joe where Gordon Harmon is and Joe’s having an awful time explaining how the deal fell through. He’s told four quite different stories so far and is working on a fifth! You could save Joe a lot of mental worry, Brand, if you turned yourself into a star full-back.”
“I’m afraid I’m a bit light,” laughed Willard. “Maybe I could find a full-back for you, though, if the reward was big enough.”
“You’ll receive the undying gratitude of Joe and the key of the city.”
“Huh, I’ve seen the city!” said Willard.
The “city,” though, in spite of Willard’s sarcasm, was really a very nice one. Not, of course, that it was more than a town, and a small one at that, but it was clean and well laid out, with plenty of trees, lots of modestly attractive residences and a sufficiency of wide-awake stores. When Willard said he had seen it he was enlarging on the truth, for it was not until the day succeeding the remark that he really had a thorough look at it. Then Martin took him in tow and, since there were few recitations on Saturdays, they spent an hour or more roaming about it. There were two distinct shopping centers in Alton. One lay along Main Street a good half-mile from the Academy, and on the side streets adjacent, and one occupied two blocks on West Street, scarcely more than a long stone-throw from the school. The latter catered almost exclusively to the students, and the latter found few excuses for going further afield to make their purchases. Martin told Willard which of the nearby ice cream parlors had the best soda fountain, showed him which of the stationery stores was most popular, where he could buy haberdashery at fair prices, where to get his shoes shined if such an extravagant proceeding appealed to him, where the best barber shop was – even cautioning him against “the wop at the third chair who would shave your neck if you didn’t watch him” – and, in short, thoroughly initiated him into the mysteries of West Street buying. In school parlance, the locality was “Bagdad,” although the shops were never referred to as “bazaars.”
“You can get tick at any of them,” Martin explained, “but they’ll make it mighty uncomfortable for you if you don’t pay up every half-year, and faculty sort of frowns on running up bills. It’s better to pay cash if you can, Brand. Besides, you can usually jew ’em down if you have the money in your hand. Last spring Stacey Ross bought a suit over there at Girtle’s and they charged it to him at sixty dollars, and a fellow called ‘Poke’ Little went and paid cash for one just like it and got off for forty-seven-fifty. Stacey had a fit and went back and read the riot act. But the old geezer told him that ‘time was money’!” Martin chuckled. “In his case two months’ time was twelve dollars and a half! Stacey got even, though.”
“How?” asked Willard.
“Got a thin fellow named Patterson, a sophomore, to put the suit on and walk up and down the block for an hour one Saturday afternoon. The clothes hung all over Patterson and he looked like a scarecrow, and he carried a placard around his neck that said: ‘This suit was bought at Girtle’s.’ Old Girtle was furious and tried to get Patterson to go away. Offered him ten dollars, Patterson said, but it didn’t sound like Girtle! Anyhow, Patterson kept on walking up and down and about two dozen kids went with him and a lot of the fellows stood around and cheered and we had quite a fine moment! ‘Mac’ had Stacey on the carpet about it, but when Stacey explained Mac only smiled and let him go.”
“Is ‘Mac’ what you call the Principal?” asked Willard.
“Yes, it’s short for ‘Doctor Maitland McPherson.’ Have you met him yet? He’s a good sort, Mac is. There’s a story that some years back there was