“Don, it’s kilt I am intoirely,” answered Paddy. “For thirty mortal minutes Gardiner had me snapping back the ball to that butter-fingered Bowles. If he doesn’t put another quarter-back in soon I shall hand in me resignation. And to make things worse Gardiner stayed up all last night and thought out a most wonderful new trick play, and to-day he tried to put us through it. And, oh dear! I wish you could have seen the backs all tearing around like pigs with a dog after them, bumping into each other, getting in each other’s way and all striking the line at different places and asking, please wouldn’t we let them through! Oh dear! oh dear! And that chap Moore, who plays center on the second, got me around the neck twice and tried to pull my head off. If he doesn’t quit that trick I’ll be forced to forget my elegant manners and slug him.”
“And he’ll wipe the turf up with you, and I hope he does,” said Dave, rubbing his nose ruefully.
“And the St. Eustace game only two weeks off,” continued Paddy, heedless of the interruption. “We’re in an awful state, fellows. I wish we had Remsen back to coach us. Gardiner’s all right in his way, but he doesn’t begin to know the football that Stephen Remsen does. We’re goners this year for sure.”
“Oh, cheer up,” answered Don. “You can do lots in two weeks. Look at the material we’ve got.”
“Yes, look at it,” said Paddy. “There isn’t a man in the line or back of it that’s played in a big game except Greene and myself.”
“But St. Eustace has a lot of new men this year, too.”
“Don’t you believe it, my boy. That’s what they say, but Gardiner told me yesterday that St. Eustace has five fellows on the team that played against us last year.”
“Does the game come off here?” asked Wayne.
“No, it’s at Marshall this year. We’re all going down, aren’t we, fellows?” asked Dave.
“Of course,” answered Don. “We will go and see Paddy slaughtered. Wayne will go along and we’ll teach him to sing ‘Hilltonians.’ By the way, I’ve been trying to persuade him that he ought to take up training for the track team. He will make a first-class runner. But he’s so terribly lazy and indifferent that it’s like talking to a football dummy.”
“Of course you ought to, Wayne,” exclaimed Paddy earnestly. “It’s your duty, my young friend. Every fellow ought to do everything he can for the success of the school. I’d try for the team if I could run any faster than I can walk.”
“Oh, well,” said Wayne, “I’ll see about it.”
“You ought to jump at the chance,” said Dave, in disgust. “It isn’t every chap that gets asked by the captain of the team. And, let me tell you – Hello! Six o’clock, fellows. Who’s for supper?”
“Every one,” cried Don, jumping up. “But I’ve got to wash first. Some one light the gas if they can find the matches.”
“Well, I’m off,” said Paddy.
“So’m I,” echoed Dave. “I say, Don, I’m coming over after supper to see if you can help me with that trigonometry stuff.”
“All right,” answered Don from the bedroom between splashes. “If you know less about it than I do I’ll be surprised.”
“Come on,” cried Paddy impatiently from the doorway —
“‘The time has come,’ the Walrus said,
‘To eat of many things;
Of apple sauce and gingerbread,
Of cake and red herrings!’”
CHAPTER IV
THE REVOLT BEGINS
Wayne lounged down the steps of the Academy Building, a little bundle of books under his arm, and listlessly crossed the grass to the wall that guarded the river bluff, from where an enticing panorama of stream and meadow and distant mountains lay before him. The day was one of those unseasonably warm ones which sometimes creep unexpectedly into the month of November, and which make every task doubly hard and any sort of idleness attractive. The river was intensely blue, the sky almost cloudless, and the afternoon sun shone with mellow warmth on the deep red bricks of the ancient buildings.
Wayne tossed his books on the sod and perched himself on the top of the wall. The last recitation of the day was over and he was at a loss for something to do. To be sure, he might, in fact ought to study; but study didn’t appeal to him. Now and then he turned his head toward the building in hope of seeing some fellow who could be induced to come and talk with him. Don was doing laboratory work in physics and Dave and Paddy were undoubtedly on the campus. At a little distance a couple of boys whom Wayne did not know were passing a football back and forth as they loitered along the path. A boy whom he did know ran down the steps and shouted a salutation to him, but Wayne only waved his hand in reply. It was Ferguson, who talked of nothing but postage stamps, and Wayne had outgrown stamps and found no interest in discussing them. Ferguson went on around the corner of Academy Building toward the gymnasium, and with a start Wayne recollected that at that moment he should be making one of a squad of upper middle-class fellows and exercising with the chest weights. He looked doubtfully toward the point where Ferguson had disappeared. What right, he asked himself, had a preparatory school, where a fellow goes to learn Greek and Latin and mathematics, and such things, to insist that a fellow shall develop his muscles with chest weights and dumb-bells and single sticks? None at all; the whole thing was manifestly unjust. Schools were to make scholars and not athletes, said Wayne, and he, for one, stood ready to protest, to the principal himself if need be, against the mistaken system.
The moment for such protest must be drawing near, thought the boy, with something between a grin and a scowl, for he had already twice absented himself from gymnasium work, and only yesterday a polite but firm note from Professor Beck had reminded him of the fact. Well, he was in for it now, and he might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb. He gathered his books together and started along the river path toward the campus in search of Paddy or Dave. He wanted to tell some one about it.
Wayne had been at Hillton two months, and was apparently no nearer being reconciled to the discipline and spirit of the Academy than on the day he entered. He found the studies many and difficult and the rules onerous. Everything was so different from what he had been accustomed to. At home he had attended a small private school where laxity of discipline and indifference to study occasioned but scant comment. The dozen or so scholars studied practically what they pleased and when they pleased, which in many cases was very little. Wayne’s mother had died when he was five years of age; his father, who had labored conscientiously at the boy’s upbringing, had erred on the side of leniency. Wayne had been given most everything for which he had asked, including his own way on many occasions when a denial would have worked better results. A boy with less inherent manliness might have been spoiled beyond repair. Wayne was – well, perhaps half spoiled; at all events unfitted for his sudden transition to a school like Hillton, where every boy was thrown entirely on his own resources and was judged by his individual accomplishments.
Wayne envied Don and Paddy, and even Dave, their ability to conquer lessons with apparent ease. He was not lazy, but was lacking in a very valuable thing called application, which is sometimes better than brains. And where Don mastered a lesson in thirty minutes Wayne spent twice that time on a like task. It had required two months of the hardest coaching to fit Wayne for admission into the upper middle class at the Academy, and now he was making a sad muddle of his studies and was beginning to get discouraged. He wished his father hadn’t sent him to Hillton; or, rather, he would wish that were it not for Don – and Paddy – and Dave – and, yes, for lots of other things. Wayne sighed as he thought of what a jolly place the Academy would be if it wasn’t for lessons – and chest weights! And this brought him back to his grievance, and, having reached the campus, he looked about to find some one to whom he might confide his perplexities and resolves.
But both Paddy and Dave were too busy to heed any one else’s troubles.