BAD NEWS
In Loring’s room that Sunday morning the steam radiator was hissing
softly, perhaps at the chill, damp current of air blowing in on it from
the partly opened window, the floor was liberally strewn with pages,
and sections of three Sunday papers and three youths, one for each
paper, sat or sprawled about in lazy comfort. Wattles, just a trifle
more proper and solemn than on week-days, with his best dark suit on,
and his black derby immaculately brushed, had left a moment before for
the village, a prayer-book and hymnal firmly clutched in one hand.
Wattles always left early for church, walked slowly, and with dignity,
and, having reached the small edifice at the far end of the village,
spent a pleasant quarter of an hour watching the arrival of the other
members of the congregation. After his departure Tom rescued the comic
supplement from beside his chair, and gave it his attention. So long
as Wattles, redolent of sabbatical decorum, had been there he had not
had the courage to show interest in it. He felt that Wattles would
strongly, if silently, disapprove; and since the incident at Danbury
Tom had entertained for Wattles a vast respect. His enjoyment of the
highly colored pages was, though, speedily interrupted by Clif.
“Did you see what Yale did to the Army, Tom?”
“No, I wasn’t able to get over to New Haven.”
“Weren’t you, really? Well, Yale piled up 31 to Army’s 10.”
“I was just reading it,” said Loring, coming into view from behind his
paper. “Yale’s finally got a winning team, I think.”
“That’s what you hear every year,” said Clif. “Then it doesn’t come
off! Still, she must be a heap better this year to run up 31 against
Army. Brown didn’t do so badly, either.”
“What did she do?” inquired Tom innocently. “Beat Vassar?”
“She beat St. Bonaventure, 19 to 0, and that’s――”
“Saint Who? What high school’s that, Clif?”
“Shut up! It’s the ‘high school’ that scored against Cornell two or
three weeks ago, and a team that can do that――”
“Where do you get that stuff? Everybody scores on Cornell. It’s quite
the proper thing to do this year. Colgate did it, and Williams, and now
Dartmouth.”
“Yes, and what was Cornell doing while Dartmouth made a little old
seven points?”
“That’s what I was wondering,” replied Tom. “Maybe she was having
afternoon tea, eh?”
“Seems to me,” laughed Loring, “you chaps are mightily interested in
games that don’t mean much to you. What about Wolcott’s showing against
Riverside Military? It doesn’t make our score against Toll’s look so
fine, eh?”
“I guess Riverside’s pretty weak,” said Tom. “What’s she done this
season, anyway?”
“I don’t know much about her,” answered Loring, “but 41 to 0 is an
awful score! It looks as if Wolcott might still have an edge on us,
Tom. What I don’t understand, though, is about that fellow Grosfawk.
He played only part of the time yesterday, and nothing is said about
him. I thought he was Wolcott’s particular wonder, and that they were
building a bunch of plays around him.”
“It is sort of queer,” said Tom. “The way they tell it here, Grosfawk
was the whole thing last year when they played us. This year you don’t
hear anything about him.”
“He’s only a substitute, as I figure it,” remarked Clif. “You see him
getting in now and then, but he’s never in the first line-up.”
“Maybe it’s strategy,” Tom offered. “Maybe they’re trying to make us
think he’s not much so we won’t worry about him. Then they’ll start
him, and he will run rings around us, like last year.”
“Well, I suppose Mr. Otis knows what’s doing,” said Loring. “Mr.
Hilliard, and the fellows who went over yesterday to see Wolcott play,
have probably brought back some dope.”
“‘Pinky’ is all right,” observed Tom, “but it seems to me that ‘G. G.’
ought to have gone himself. By the way, they say he didn’t come back to
school.”
“Who, Pinky? I saw him at prayers this morning,” said Clif.
“No, you dumbbell, ‘G. G.’ Billy said he was feeling rotten about the
time the game was over, and they stopped at a drug store afterwards and
‘G. G.’ got dosed up there, and then went on home. Back to-morrow, I
suppose. Say, how badly was Fargo hurt? Anyone know?”
“You hear all sorts of yarns,” said Clif. “Guy Owens, the yellow haired
fellow who helps manage, said that Fargo would be laid up most of the
week. Then I heard that he got hurt in the same leg last year, and that
the doctor told him he oughtn’t to play any more.”
“Imagine ‘Big Bill’ paying any attention to that,” chuckled Tom. “Well,
we won’t need him next Saturday, I suppose. This High Point game is a
cinch, they say. Guess he will be right there on both feet the week
after!”
“From what I get about yesterday’s merry little fracas, it was a
regular humdinger,” said Clif. “I’d like to have seen it. Toll’s
roughed it up considerable. One of her fellows was put out by the
referee, they say.”
“Sure it wasn’t the umpire?” asked Tom mildly.
“Well, umpire then. Anyway, our bunch got pretty well bunged up.
Raiford’s wearing plaster all over his face to-day.”
“Must be an improvement,” said Tom. “I never did like Raiford’s face.”
Mr. Otis was not back the next day when the First got out for practice
and Mr. Hilliard, his assistant, took charge. There was no scrimmage
with the Scrub, for the First, while it had run up a big score against
its adversary on Saturday, had found plenty of opposition, and not a
few of the players were nursing wounds. “Big Bill” Fargo didn’t even
put in an appearance, although most of the temporary invalids sat
on the bench or, draped in their blankets, followed the drill. The
Scrub, left to its own devices, took up that new forward-pass play and
another, of Mr. Babcock’s devising, and worked at them until they were
running quite smoothly. Of course, however, as Loring realized, the
forward-pass play couldn’t be fairly judged until it had been tried out
in actual playing. The opposition put up by the Scrub Team substitutes,
with “Cocky” at left guard to make up the eleven, provided no real test
for the play.
That evening, after spending the whole afternoon groaning and writhing
in Number 34, Tom faced Mr. Wyatt across that well-remembered desk
and somehow floundered through an examination. Mr. Wyatt displayed no
enthusiasm over the performance, but he did say, somewhat wearily, at
the end: “All right, Kemble. I haven’t the heart to say what I ought
to. Please go before I give way to unmanly emotion!”
“Yes, sir,” said Tom. “Thanks!”
Deserted by his chums――for Clif, too, had failed to show up after
supper――Loring sat in his chair with the chess-board before him. He had
started to work out a problem, but had not got far with it. Another
problem, having nothing to do with chess, had substituted itself, and
for a long while Loring sat and tapped the black queen against the edge
of the board, and stared intently at nothing. Then, he set the board
aside and propelled the chair across to the door and through it, and
made his slow way around to West Hall. “Babe” Ridgway happened along
and pushed him the last part of his journey, depositing him by request
in the reading room. Loring was seeking something he was not at all
certain existed in the reading room, and it took him several minutes,
and much dexterous filling and backing between chairs and tables and
shelves――fortunately the room was not well occupied――to discover that
it did exist. Having secured it, he made out a slip with the date and
his name, and put it in the clip beside the wide, shallow shelf. Then,
with the issues of the daily paper published at the nearest metropolis
of the state from the middle of September to last Saturday in front of
him, he returned to his room. To his right as he left the reading room,
beyond the library, a considerable throng of fellows were congregated
around the recreation room doorway, and some subject of more than
ordinary interest appeared to engross them, for every one seemed to be
talking at once and there was quite an atmosphere of excitement down
there. But, although mildly curious, Loring preferred not to venture
into the crowd with his chair, and so made his way back to East Hall.
Once there, he devoted the rest of the time before study hour, and much
time thereafter to a careful and thoughtful perusal of the many papers
he had brought back with him; or, to be more exact, to certain items in
those papers.
Tom, coming downstairs after that enervating experience in Mr. Wyatt’s
study, saw the crowd at the end of the corridor, and joined it as fast
as he could. An acquaintance named Bumstead, a slight, sandy haired
youth, who wore big, round spectacles, and whom Tom disliked cordially,
presented himself as the nearest source of information. Bumstead turned
incredulous, but joyous eyes on the inquirer.
“Say, haven’t you heard?” he exclaimed almost shrilly. “Gee, where have
you been?”
“Picking daisies,” replied Tom impatiently. “Spill it!”
“Otis is sick, and can’t come back the rest of the season! He’s got the
‘flu’! They just got word from him.”
“Roll your hoop!” said Tom incredulously. “Who says so?”
“Gee, it’s true! Ask any one. Faculty’s called a meeting of the
Athletic Committee, too. This evening. In ‘Pinky’s’ room. Ask any one.”
“If ‘G. G.’s’ so blamed sick how could he write and tell about it?”
demanded Tom witheringly. “Of course, I’m not saying he hasn’t got the
‘flu’; lots of folks have it; but it’s crazy to say he isn’t coming
back.”
“Maybe he didn’t write himself,” said Bumstead. “Maybe it was the
doctor or some one. Anyway――”
But Tom had caught sight of Joe Whitemill, of the First Team, and he
plowed his way through to him.
“What’s it all about, Whitemill?” he asked anxiously. “Is ‘G. G.’
really out of it?”
“Eh? Oh, hello, Kemble. Yes, that’s the way we get it. He’s down with
influenza, and the doctor says he won’t be able to do any more coaching
this season. I don’t know where the story came from, though. Every one
has it, but no one knows where it started. For my part――”
“It’s straight goods,” interrupted Jimmy Ames, appearing at Tom’s side.
“Mr. Connover told Dave Lothrop and Dave spilled it a few minutes ago.
Faculty’s sent word to the Committee to get busy, and there’s going to
be a meeting in a few minutes.”
“But, Great Heck!” exclaimed Tom. “What――what――why, that’ll play the
very dickens, won’t it?”
Whitemill grinned, but the grin held no humor. “Oh, no, not at all!
Swapping coaches ten days before the big game is a mere trifle, Kemble.
It’s easy when you――”
“There won’t be any swapping,” predicted Jimmy. “Where’d we get a new
coach now? Anyway, he wouldn’t know the team, and he’d be worse than
none. ‘Pinky’ will take Otis’s place, of course.”
“That’s so,” said Tom. “Well――but, heck, fellows, it’s going to make a
difference! How does ‘Pinky’ know what Otis was going to do? Or does he
know?”
“Search me,” said Whitemill despondently. “I suppose they’ve talked
things over a good deal, though. Anyway, we’ll pull through somehow.
Hang it, we’ll beat that bunch without any coach at all if we have to!”
“Spoken like a hero!” commented Jimmy Ames. “Just the same, if I
had anything up on the Wolcott game I’d begin to hedge just about
now, old dear. Say, Dave’s fit to be tied, fellows. He was talking
about canceling the game, and all that stuff a few minutes ago up in
‘Swede’s’ room.”
“Cancel the game!” growled Whitemill. “I’ll say not! That would be a
swell thing to do! Gosh, I’d rather get licked to smithereens than not
play at all! Besides, why, thunder, Jimmy, you can’t crawl out of a
game just because you’ve lost your coach! What’s the matter with Dave,
anyway?”
“Oh, he was just getting rid of some of his peeve, I suppose,” said
Jimmy. “Just talking to relieve his mind. I don’t blame him, though,
for being a mite upset. Gosh, he’s captain, and if this thing’s as bad
as they say it is――”
“There’s the gong,” broke in Tom. “A grand lot of studying we’ll do
to-night! Say, where’s ‘Pinky’? Any one seen him? Why doesn’t some one
ask him what the real facts are?”
“You do it,” suggested Whitemill. “He’s probably in just the right
temper to answer fool questions.”
“Fool questions be blowed!” called Tom after the halfback’s retreating
form. “How come we fellows haven’t some right to know what’s going on,
you big cheese?”
“Just what is it you’d like to know?” inquired a voice at Tom’s back.
Tom, startled, turned to find Mr. Hilliard facing him soberly from
the foot of the stairs. Tom swallowed. Then, conscious of the sudden
silence that had fallen about him, he recovered his assurance.
“About Mr. Otis, sir,” he answered. “They say he’s sick and won’t be
able to come back all season. I――we’d like to know if that’s true.”
“Quite true, Kemble,” replied “Pinky” gravely. “Mr. Otis has contracted
influenza, and, so his doctor writes us, is a very sick man. Even if
he recovers within the customary time he will not be in condition
to continue his work here with the Team. It is a very unfortunate
happening, both for Mr. Otis and for the School, but we must all make
the best of it. The gong has rung, fellows.”