Considered even as a first contest, the afternoon’s performance wasn’t encouraging from an Alton standpoint, for the line had been slow and had played high, the backs had worked every man for himself, with no semblance of team-play, and even Ned Richards’ generalship had been particularly headless. Against an equally green and much lighter team, Alton had failed to show any real football. However, one swallow doesn’t make a summer, nor one game a season, and so Coach Cade had little to say after the contest, and the audience, taking itself lazily away through the warm sunlit afternoon, chose to view the humorous aspects of the encounter and disregard its faults. Harley McLeod did fairly well at right end until he gave way to Billy Crocker, and Jimmy played at right half during a brief and glorious third quarter and retired with a bruised and ensanguined nose.
In the Coach’s room, across Academy street from the Green, Mr. Cade and Captain Mart Proctor conferred long that evening and in the end reached the conclusion, among other less certain ones, that the task of building a team this fall was going to be a man-sized job!
Jimmy had determined that he would drop in at the Sign of the Football and look the shop over at the first opportunity. By that he meant the first occasion when he was in want of something that might reasonably be expected to be on sale there. But it didn’t seem that the opportunity would come, for, with the football management supplying everything from head harness to shoe-laces, there wasn’t anything he stood in need of. Nor, between the reading of the advertisement to Stanley that Thursday afternoon and the hour of eleven on the following Tuesday, did he even get as far from the Green as West street. He had heard, though, many comments on the Sign of the Football. Among his acquaintances the store was treated as something of a sensation, while Russell Emerson and his partner in the enterprise were both scoffed at and commended. The idea of an Alton student descending to shop-keeping disturbed many fastidious ones, while others thought it rather a joke – though they couldn’t seem to put their finger on the point of it! – and still others declared that it was a corking good stunt and they hoped Emerson and his pal would make it go. Jimmy lined up with the latter when the matter was discussed in his hearing, and so did Harley McLeod, as, for instance, on Monday night when a half-dozen fellows were gathered in Harley’s room in Haylow. The number included Jimmy and Stanley, Ned Richards, Harley’s room-mate, Billy Crocker and Cal Grainger, the Baseball Captain. It was the latter who introduced the subject when, apropos of something Ned Richards had said regarding his finances, he informed them that anything approaching financial depression wouldn’t bother him hereafter as he and Brand Harmon were going to open a tea shop in the town.
“Keeping a shop is getting to be all the rage,” he explained airily, “and those that get into it early are going to reap the shekels. Brand and I have got it all doped out. Some swell little joint we’re going to have, too. Rose and gray is to be the – the color motif. We’re going to have three kinds of tea: hot, cold and Oolong; and a full line of sandwiches and cakes. Wait till you see us swelling around there with the High School girls! Fine moments, boy, believe me!”
“Better stock up with chewing gum,” suggested Ned Richards. “From what I see, I guess that’s about all those High School girls ever eat!”
“You’re jealous because you didn’t think of it yourself,” retorted Cal untroubledly.
“Hope you get more trade than those fellows who opened the sporting goods store are getting,” said Billy Crocker. He was a rather large, though not heavy, youth, with black hair and thick eyebrows that met above his nose. The latter, being beak-like, gave him an unattractively parrotish look. Billy lived at home, in the town, but spent most of his evenings at the Academy. He wasn’t especially popular, and fellows sometimes found themselves wondering why it was he was so frequently in evidence at such gatherings as to-night’s. The explanation, however, was very simple. Billy Crocker took his welcome for granted and didn’t wait for a formal invitation. Being a football player, he affected the company of the football crowd, and although many protested him as a nuisance he was allowed to tag along. “I’ve looked in there twenty times,” continued Billy, not too truthfully, “and I’ve never seen any one there yet. They’re a couple of nuts!”
“As a member of the Alton Academy Merchants’ Association,” began Cal protestingly.
“They must have some money they don’t need,” interrupted Ned Richards enviously. “I heard they’d put a thousand dollars into the thing.”
“A thousand dollars!” scoffed Billy Crocker. “More like a hundred! Why, those fellows haven’t any money, Ned. They’re on their uppers. Patterson wears clothes that were made when Grant took Richmond!”
“What scandal is this?” murmured Jimmy. “Who’s Grant?”
“Well, that’s what I heard,” replied Ned coldly. “Of course, if the gentlemen are personal friends of yours, Crocker – ”
“They’re not, thanks,” answered Billy emphatically. “I don’t – ”
“They’re friends of mine, though,” cut in Harley. “At least, Emerson is. And I wish him luck. He’s got courage, that chap. Guess it’s so about his being poor, though, for we came across him two or three weeks ago waiting on table at a hotel at Pine Harbor. He was a good waiter, too.”
Jimmy rather wished that Harley hadn’t told that, for, while he had only admiration for the deed, he doubted that Ned and Cal and Billy Crocker would view it in the same way. However, no one looked other than faintly interested; no one, that is, save Billy Crocker. Billy laughed scornfully. “Those fellows would do anything to get a bit of money,” he said. “It was Patterson who wore Irv Ross’s suit up and down West street a couple of years ago, with a placard on him like a sandwich man, and all for a dollar and a half. You fellows remember.”
“Yes, but it was Stacey Ross’s suit, and not Irv’s,” said Stanley. “Girtle charged Stacey ten or twelve dollars more than he charged another chap for the same thing. Girtle said it was because the other fellow paid cash and Stacey didn’t, but Stacey was mad clean through and got Patterson to put the suit on and walk up and down in front of the store with a placard saying ‘Bought at Girtle’s.’ Of course the clothes hung all over Patterson – ”
“That’s all ancient history, Stan,” said Harley.
“Well, what I was getting at is that, as I remember it, this fellow did it for a joke and wasn’t paid for it.”
“He certainly was paid,” exclaimed Billy. “I know!”
“He ought to have been,” remarked Ned. “Anyway, Stan, there’s no sense in arguing with Crocker about what his friends do or did. He’s in the know, aren’t you, Crocker?”
“I told you they aren’t my friends,” answered Billy gruffly. “I don’t know either of them, except by sight.”
“Then why,” asked Ned, yawning, “persist in talking about ’em?”
“I only said they wouldn’t make that store pay,” replied the other defensively. “And they won’t.”
“Say, Crocker,” inquired Jimmy, “isn’t it your father or uncle or something who runs the hardware store?”
“Father,” said Billy in a tone that suggested reticence.
“Thought so. Maybe you’re a bit prejudiced then. You folks sell the same line of stuff as Emerson and Patterson do, eh? Guess you don’t like the idea of a rival almost next door.”
“All those fellows will sell won’t affect