“I suppose so,” said Frank Brattle. “What’s your position, Turner?”
“Position?”
“Yes; I mean, where did you play? Behind the line, I suppose, or maybe end.”
“Oh, yes, yes, behind the line. You see, I – I – ”
“There aren’t many fellows can play half-back the way Ned can,” said Laurie, gravely. “He won’t tell you so, but if you ever meet any one who saw him play against Weedon School last year – ”
“Shut up!” begged Ned, almost tearfully.
Kewpie was grinning delightedly. Joe Stevenson viewed Ned with absolute affection. “Half-back, eh? Well, we can use another good half, Turner, and I hope you’re the fellow. I don’t know whether Kewpie told you that I’m captain this year, but I am, and I’m going to try mighty hard to captain a winning team. You look a bit light, but I dare say you’re fast, and, for my part, I like them that way. Besides, we’ve got Mason and Boessel if we want the heavy sort. Practice starts to-morrow at four, by the way. How about your brother? Glad to have him come out, too. Even if he hasn’t played, he might learn the trick. And there’s next year to think of, you know.”
“I think not, thanks,” answered Laurie. “One football star is enough in the family.”
“Well, if you change your mind, come on and have a try. Glad to have met you. See you to-morrow – er – Turner. I want to find Dave, Frank. Coming along?”
The two older boys made off toward West Hall, and as soon as they were out of hearing Ned turned indignantly on Laurie.
“You’re a nice one!” he hissed. “Look at the hole you’ve got me in! ‘Half-back’! ‘Played against Weedon School’! What did you want to talk that way for? Why, those fellows think I know football!”
“Cheer up,” answered his brother, grinning. “All you’ve got to do is bluff it through. Besides, Proudtree asked us not to let on we didn’t know a football from a doughnut, and I had to say something! You acted as if you were tongue-tied!”
“Yes; that’s so – you started it!” Ned turned belligerently around. “Said it would be a favor to you – ” He stopped, discovering that Proudtree had silently disappeared and that he was wasting his protests on the empty air. “Huh!” he resumed after a moment of surprise, “it’s a good thing he did beat it! Look here, Laurie, I’m in a beast of a mess. Yow know I can’t face that captain chap to-morrow. Suppose he handed me a football and told me to kick it!”
“He won’t. I’ve watched football practice back home. You’ll stand around in a circle – ”
“How the dickens can I stand in a circle?” objected Ned.
“And pass a football for a while. Then you’ll try starting, and maybe fall on the ball a few times, until you’re nice and lame, and after that you’ll run around the track half a dozen times – ”
“Oh, shut up! You make me sick! I won’t do it. I’m through. I’d look fine, wouldn’t I? I guess not, partner!”
“You’ve got to, Ned,” replied Laurie calmly. “You can’t back down now. The honor of the Turners is at stake! Come on up and I’ll read that rules book to you. Maybe some of it’ll seep in!”
After a moment of indecision Ned arose and followed silently.
CHAPTER V – IN THE PERFORMANCE OF DUTY
School began in earnest the next morning. Ned and Laurie were awakened from a deep slumber by the imperative clanging of a gong. There were hurried trips to the bath-room, and finally a descent to the recreation-room and morning prayers. Breakfast followed in the pleasant, sunlit dining-hall, and at half-past eight the twins went to their first class. There wasn’t much real work performed that morning, however. Books were bought and, being again in possession of funds, Ned purchased lavishly of stationery and supplies. He had a veritable passion for patent binders, scratch-pads, blank-books, and pencils, and Laurie viewed the result of a half-hour’s mad career with unconcealed concern.
“You’re all wrong, Ned,” he said earnestly. “We aren’t opening a stationery emporium. Besides, we can’t begin to compete with the office. They buy at wholesale, and – ”
“Never mind the comedy. You’ll be helping yourself to these things soon enough, and then you won’t be so funny.”
“That’s the only way they’ll ever get used up! Why, you’ve got enough truck there to last three years!”
There was one interesting annual observance that morning that the twins witnessed inadvertently. At a little after eight the fellows began to assemble in front of School Hall. Ned and Laurie, joining the throng, supposed that it was merely awaiting the half-hour, until presently there appeared at the gate a solitary youth of some fourteen years, who came up the circling drive about as joyfully as a French Royalist approaching the guillotine. Deep silence prevailed until the embarrassed and unhappy youth had conquered half of the interminable distance. Then a loud “Hep!” was heard, and the throng broke into a measured refrain:
“Hep! – Hep! – Hep! – Hep!”
This was in time to the boy’s dogged steps. A look of consternation came into his face and he faltered. Then, however, he set his jaw, looked straight ahead, and came on determinedly.
“Hep! – Hep!”
Up the steps he passed, a disk of color in each cheek, looking neither to right nor left, and passed from sight. As he did so, the chorus changed to a good-humored laugh of approval. Ned made inquiry of a youth beside him.
“Day boy,” was the explanation. “There are ten of them, you know: fellows who live in town. We always give them a welcome. That chap had spunk, but you wait and see some of them!”
Two more followed together, and, each upheld in that moment of trial by the presence of the other, passed through the ordeal with flying colors. But the twins noted that the laughing applause was lacking. After that, the remaining seven arrived almost on each other’s heels and the air was filled with “Heps!” Some looked only surprised, others angry; but most of then grinned in a sickly, embarrassed way and went by with hanging heads.
“Sort of tough,” was Ned’s verdict, and Laurie agreed as they followed the last victim inside.
“It looks as if day students weren’t popular,” he added.
Later, though, he found that he was wrong. The boys who lived in the village were accepted without reservation, but, naturally enough, seldom attained to a full degree of intimacy with those who lived in the dormitories.
By afternoon the twins had become well shaken down into the new life, had made several superficial acquaintances, and had begun to feel at home. Of Kewpie Proudtree they had caught but fleeting glimpses, for that youth displayed a tendency to keep at a distance. As the hour of four o’clock approached, Ned became more and more worried, and his normally sunny countenance took on an expression of deep gloom. Laurie kept close at his side, fearing that courage would fail and Ned would bring disgrace to the tribe of Turner. But Laurie ought to have known better, for Ned was never what his fellows would have called a “quitter.” Ned meant to see it through. His mind had retained very little of the football lore that his brother had poured into it the night before, but he had, at least, a somewhat clearer idea of the general principles of the game. He knew, for instance, that a team comprised eleven players instead of the twelve he had supposed, and that certain restrictions governed the methods by which you might wrest the ball from an opponent. Thus, you could not legally snatch it out of his arms, nor trip him up in the hope that he would drop it. Ned thought the restrictions rather silly, but accepted them.
The athletic field, known in school parlance as the play-field, was even larger than it had looked from their windows. It held two gridirons and three baseball diamonds, as well as a quarter-mile track and ten tennis-courts. There was also a picturesque and well-appointed