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
field-house and a fairly large grand stand. To Ned’s relief, most of the
ninety students were in attendance, though only about forty of the
number were in playing togs. Ned’s idea was that among so many he might
escape close observation.
He had, of course, handled a football more or less, and he was possessed
of his full share of common sense. Besides, he had perhaps rather more
than his share of assurance. To his own surprise, if not to Laurie’s, he
got through the hour and a half of practice very creditably. Seasoned
candidates and novices were on the same plane to-day. There was, first
of all, a talk by the coach. Mr. Mulford was a short, broad,
good-humored man of about thirty, with a round and florid countenance,
which possibly accounted for the nickname of “Pinky” that the school had
affectionately awarded him. His real name was Stephen, and he had played
guard, and played it well, for several years with Trinity College. This
was his fourth season as football coach at Hillman’s and his third as
baseball coach. So far he had been fairly successful in both sports.
His talk was brief and earnest, although he smiled through it all. He
wanted lots of material, but he didn’t want any fellow to report for
practice who didn’t mean to do his level best and stick it out. Those
who were afraid of either hard work or hard knocks had better save their
time and his. Those who did report would get a fair trial and no favor.
He meant to see the best team this fall that Hillman’s School had ever
turned out, one that would start with a rush and finish with a bang,
like a rocket!
“And,” he went on, “I want this team made up the way a rocket is. A
rocket is filled with stars, fellows, but you don’t realize it until the
final burst. So we’re going to put the soft pedal on individual
brilliancy this year. It almost had us licked last fall, as you’ll
remember. This year we’re going to try hard for a well-rounded team of
hard workers, fellows who will interlock and gear together. It’s the
machine that wins, the machine of eleven parts that work all together in
oil. We’re going to find the eleven parts first, and after that we’re
going to do the oiling. All right now! Ten men to a squad. Get balls and
pass in circles. Learn to hold the ball when you catch it. Glue right to
it. And when you pass, put it where you want it to go. Don’t think that
the work is silly and unnecessary, because it isn’t. A fellow who can’t
hold a ball when it comes to him is of no use on this team. So keep your
minds right on the job and your eyes right on the ball. All right,
Captain Stevenson.”
At least, Ned could, to quote Laurie, “stand in a circle” and pass a
football, and he did, and did it better than several others in his
squad. In the same way, he could go after a trickling pigskin and catch
it up without falling over himself, though it is possible that his
“form” was less graceful than that of one or two of his fellows. When,
later, they were formed in a line and started off by the snapping of the
ball in the hands of a world-wearied youth in a faded blue sweater
bearing a white H on its breast, Ned didn’t show up so well, for he was
almost invariably one of the last to plunge forward. The blue-sweatered
youth called his attention to the fact finally in a few well-chosen
words.
“You guy in the brown bloomers!” he bellowed. (Of course they weren’t
bloomers, but a pair of somewhat expansive golf breeches that Ned,
lacking proper attire, had donned, not without misgivings, on Laurie’s
advice.) “Are you asleep? Put some life into it! Watch this ball, and
when you see it roll, jump! You don’t look like a cripple, but you
surely act like one!”
Toward the end a half-dozen last-year fellows took to punting, but, to
Ned’s relief, no one suggested that he take a hand at it, and at
half-past five or thereabouts his trials came to an end. He went out of
his way, dodging behind a group on the side-line, to escape Joe
Stevenson, but ran plump into Frank Brattle instead.
“Hello, Turner,” Frank greeted. “How did it go?”
“All right,” replied Ned, with elaborate carelessness. “Fine.”
“Rather a nuisance having to go through the kindergarten stunts, isn’t
it?” continued the other, sympathetically. “Mulford’s a great hand at
what he calls the fundamentals, though. I dare say he’s right, too. It’s
funny how easy it is to get out of the hang of things during the summer.
I’m as stiff as a broom!”
“So am I,” answered Ned, earnestly and truthfully. Frank smiled, nodded,
and wandered on, and Ned, sighting Laurie hunched up in the grand stand,
joined him. “It’s a bully game, football,” he sighed, as he lowered
himself cautiously to a seat and listened to hear his muscles creak.
“Full of beneficial effects and all that.” Laurie grinned in silence.
Ned felt experimentally of his back, frowned, rocked himself backward
and forward twice, and looked relieved. “I guess there’s nothing
actually broken,” he murmured, “I dare say it’ll be all right soon.”
“They say the first two months are the hardest,” responded Laurie,
comfortingly. “After that there’s no sensation.”
Ned nodded. “I believe it,” he said feelingly. He fixed his gaze on the
farther goal-post and after a minute of silence remarked:
“I’d like to catch the man who invented football!”
He turned a challenging look on his brother. Laurie blinked and for
several seconds his lips moved noiselessly and there was a haunted look
in his gray eyes. Then, triumphantly, he completed the couplet: “It may
suit some, but it doesn’t suit all!”
“Rotten!” said Ned.
“I’d like to see you do any better,” answered Laurie, aggrievedly.
“There isn’t any proper rhyme for ‘football,’ anyway.”
“Nor any reason for it, either. Of all—”
“Hi, you fellow!” interrupted a scandalized voice. “What are you doing
up there? Have you done your two laps?”
The speaker was a lanky, red-haired man who bristled with authority and
outrage.
“Two laps?” stammered Ned. “No, sir.”
“Get at it, then. And beat it in when you have. Want to catch cold, do
you? Sitting around without a blanket or anything like that!” The
trainer shot a final disgusted look at the offender and went on.
“Gee,” murmured Ned, “I thought I was done! Two laps, he said! I’ll
never be able to, Laurie!”
“Oh, yes, you will,” was the cheerful response. “And while you’re doing
them you can think up a better rhyme for ‘football’ than I did!”
Ned looked back reproachfully as he limped to the ground and, having
gained the running-track, set off at a stiff-kneed jog. Laurie’s
expression relented as he watched.
“Sort of tough on the kid,” he muttered sympathetically. Then his face
hardened again and he shook his head. “I’ve got to be stern with him,
though!”