probation didn’t weigh as heavily on kendall as he had thought it was going to. it was hard at first to reconcile himself to giving up the football career he had dreamed of for two years, or, rather, since he meant to try again as soon as he might, to postponing it. but after a week or so the first sting of disappointment passed. at least, he was not barred from watching practice, even if he couldn’t take part in it. as for the saturday afternoon games, he missed none of them. and when, on the thirteenth of october, st. john’s academy played yardley to no score game kendall was as bitterly disgruntled as anyone. the plain truth of the matter was that yardley should have won that contest by two scores. that she didn’t was due to two things: wallace hammel’s inability to kick a field goal from the twenty-five yard line and simms’s headless generalship when, in the third period, yardley had the ball on st. john’s twelve yards on a first down. dan was not playing. if[109] he had been simms’s signal for a forward pass would have been countermanded. the quarter-back got the throw off in good style, but norton, who was to have taken it, ran too far across the field and the ball went into the eager arms of a st. john’s player who romped half the length of the field with it before simms, striving heroically to avert the consequences of his error of judgment, brought him down from behind. after that holmes was sent in at quarter with instructions to pound at the opponent’s line for a touchdown. but st. john’s managed to stave off defeat until the final whistle came to her rescue, and went home proud and elated.
yes, even kendall, who had had scant opportunity to study the strategy of the game, saw where the trouble lay and groaned impotently more than once as yardley’s chances of victory were thrown away. what especially surprised him was hammel’s failure to kick that goal. the pass from fogg, who played center, was perfect, the dark blue line held like a wall and he had all the time in the world. and yet the ball missed the left upright by a good six feet. why, kendall was almost certain that he could have done better than that himself, although he had never tried to drop-kick a goal! he wondered on the way up the hill if anyone would object if he brought his[110] football down there some morning between recitations and tried a few goals. he didn’t believe they would. he made up his mind to do it.
and so on monday morning, after mathematics, he hurried to his room, got his old stained and frayed pigskin and went down to the gridiron. there was not a soul in sight at that time of day. it had rained in the night and the ground was soft and slippery. kendall started at the fifteen yards and missed the crossbar by five feet or so. at twenty yards he got over once and missed twice. it wasn’t as easy as it had looked. at twenty-five yards, however, he had less difficulty. ten tries netted him six goals, which wasn’t so bad considering that kendall hadn’t kicked a football for a month or more.
after that he took the ball to the side of the field and tried angles. naturally, he wasn’t overly successful at this, but he managed several times to get the pigskin across the bar, and he became so interested that he quite lost track of time and the hour bell found him far from oxford and he had to hide the football in a corner of the tennis shed and sprint all the way up the hill.
he was back again the next morning, and several other mornings that followed and, although there was none to watch or applaud, he didn’t get[111] tired of conquering the crossbar with the dirty old brown ball. when, one day he managed to put it over from placement squarely on the thirty-five yard line he was very well pleased indeed. place-kicking was something he had known nothing of before coming to yardley, and he had to solve its problems unaided. but solve them he did. he learned to judge the strength of the wind and allow for it, to point the ball according to distance and direction, to keep his eye on the spot to be kicked. doubtless he would have progressed more rapidly with someone to teach him, but he got along remarkably well alone. an expert would have instructed him to have the laced side of the ball toward him so as to use the lacings as a guide in sighting, and kendall had to discover the advisability of that unaided. and so the morning’s half hour of goal-kicking became quite a regular event for kendall, and almost every day—always when the weather allowed—he was down on the field after mathematics recitation swinging that long right leg of his and rapidly wearing the leather off the toe of his shoe. and then one forenoon when he was trudging up the hill with the pigskin tucked under his arm it suddenly occurred to him that perhaps for almost a fortnight he had been unintentionally disobeying rules. that afternoon he sacrificed a quarter[112] of an hour of watching practice and found mr. collins in the office.
“you know, sir,” explained kendall, “you told me i mustn’t take part in athletics, and i’ve been practicing goal-kicking. was that wrong, sir?”
“hm,” said mr. collins, placing the tips of his fingers together and frowning intently for a moment. “er—on your own hook, so to speak, burtis?”
“oh, yes, sir. i just wanted to see if i could do it.”
“well, no, i don’t think you are guilty of any wrong, my boy, for you say you didn’t think about it. in fact, i’m not sure that what you’ve been doing is an infringement of the rules. still, i think that, in order to be on the safe side, you had better drop it. i’m sorry, but rules are rules, eh?”
“yes, sir,” replied kendall with a sigh. then, after a moment’s hesitation, “could you tell me, mr. collins, how much longer probation is going to last?” he asked.
mr. collins shook his head gently. “no, i can’t. i don’t know, and it would be wrong to tell you if i did. but i will say that you have been doing very good work, burtis, and i think i may assure you that if you keep it up your term of probation will terminate before very long.”
[113]
“yes, sir, thank you.”
“you’re very welcome. by the way, you haven’t been to see me yet, have you? or was i out when you called?”
“no, sir, i haven’t.”
“i wish you would. what are you doing this evening after supper? couldn’t you drop down and see me for a while? there’ll be one or two other fellows there, probably. we have a sort of a club on friday nights. just to talk things over, you know, and exchange ideas. perhaps you may know the others; if not you’ll want to. better drop in for a while, burtis.”
“thank you, sir, i’d like to very much,” replied kendall gratefully.
and yet when the time came he felt rather shy about it and it was nearly eight when he finally descended the stairs and knocked at the door of mr. collins’s study. it was the assistant principal’s voice that bade him enter. the room was very comfortable and homelike. the walls were lined with bookshelves, there were many easy-chairs, most of them turned toward the hearth where the tiniest of soft coal fires was burning, and the light was supplied by a squatty lamp on the big table so shaded that the upper part of the room was left in a mellow twilight. mr. collins’s “one or two other fellows” were in reality[114] five. as kendall was introduced to them they stood up and their faces were blurred in the pleasant gloom. but two faces he recognized. one belonged to arthur thompson and the other to cowles, the manager of the football team. the remaining three boys, all first class fellows, were tooker, sanford and abercrombie. tooker was short and round and smiling; sanford, tall, dark and earnest, and wore tortoise-shell spectacles which gave him the appearance of a benignant owl; abercrombie was a small chap with light hair and a high-pitched voice whose somewhat buttonish nose was straddled by a pair of glasses which were forever dropping off when he talked and being dragged back at the end of a length of black silk cord.
everyone seemed very affable and gracious; those within reach shook hands with a hearty grip. cowles recalled the fact that kendall had come out for football and mentioned it, asking in the next breath why he had deserted them. luckily kendall was spared an answer to this as the tall and earnest sanford was remarking that he had once known a chap named burtis in new york.
“maybe a relative of yours?” he queried.
kendall, taking the deep chair pushed forward by the host, expressed his doubts of that.
[115]
“an odd name, though, if you don’t mind my saying so,” continued teller sanford. “one doesn’t encounter it often, i think.”
“probably an accident,” remarked ned tooker. “the name was curtis, do you see, and the printer got mixed and set up a b for a c. simple enough. merely a typographical error.”
“it’s no funnier than your name, ned,” observed arthur thompson. “i suppose, by the same token, your name was once hooker?”
“no,” replied ned gravely, “it was formerly ted nooker, but owing to an unfortunate habit of mine—”
everyone laughed, and kendall, without knowing what at, found himself laughing with the rest. ned waited gravely and continued:
“as i was saying, or about to say when so rudely interrupted, owing to an unfortunate habit i have of transposing the first letters of words it became ned tooker. you get me, i trust, gentlemen?”
“we get you, ned. it must be confusing, however, for your folks.”
“it was at first. but i prevailed on the family to adopt my version and now we’re all tookers. of course, it took us some time to get—”
but he was drowned in a howl of agony.
“mr. gaddis told us in class last year,” said[116] abercrombie, dropping his glasses from his nose and rescuing them, “that the pun was the lowest form of humor. i agree with him.”
ned tooker bowed deeply. “i shall inform him of your agreement, mr. abercrombie. he will be glad to learn it.”
“i don’t see why people are so down on puns,” said cowles stoutly. “i’ve heard some mighty good ones.”
“as far as i am concerned,” said mr. collins, “i think a good pun is just as funny as any other form of humor. sometimes i conclude that persons who frown on punning—and i’m not referring to mr. gaddis—are incapable of doing it. the pun has its place. dr. holmes, if you recollect, remarks that the pun can claim the parentage of homer. doubtless you can all recall instances when that worthy gentleman has descended—or arisen, all according to the point of view—to paronomasia.”
“i beg pardon, sir?” exclaimed ned tooker.
mr. collins laughed. “paronomasia, tooker; that’s the scientific term for it.”
“sounds like a disease,” observed sanford.
“i’ve known cases where it amounted to that,” replied mr. collins. “and speaking of oliver wendell holmes, the good doctor was very fond of punning, and some he perpetrated are pretty[117] bad. in one place among his verses you’ll find the following:
“‘hard is the job to launch the dangerous pun,
a pun-job dangerous as the indian one.’
that seems to show a good deal of effort, and i take it that a pun should be launched on the spur of the moment. a studied pun is heavy, and a heavy joke is as bad as a heavy biscuit.”
“i remember reading somewhere once,” said cowles, “about a fellow who was challenged to find a pun for mephistopheles. he replied that it was a hard thing for a man to do, but that he ‘may if he’s tough, elise.’”
“wow!” exclaimed tooker. “did they slay him?”
“history doesn’t record,” cowles acknowledged.
“talking about names,” said sanford, “i think one of the oddest i ever heard was sauerpickle.”
“there’s a fellow in our town named twelvetrees,” offered arthur thompson.
“when i was a boy,” said mr. collins, “my mother, i recall, used to tell of an old lady whose name was hepzibah gandel. that has always seemed to me about as odd a name as there is.”
“there’s an old man who lives near us,” hazarded kendall, “whose name is meshach fish.”
[118]
“not bad,” drawled tooker judicially. “reminds me of my friend shadrach rowe. they called him shad rowe for short.”
“ned, that will be about all from you,” laughed arthur.
“you don’t believe it?” protested tooker. “why, the man’s a prominent citizen of my town; keeps a shoot and boe store—”
there was a laugh at that. tooker waited patiently and resumed. “he doesn’t mind being called shad; makes no bones about it!”
the talk became more serious after that, and the subjects ran all the way from football to elective courses. at nine o’clock mr. collins disappeared and returned presently with a tall pitcher of lemonade and a tin box of biscuits. the conversation again became jocular, tooker starting it with:
“well, teller, i was right after all, wasn’t i?”
“about what?” asked sanford gravely.
“about the lemonade,” replied tooker with the straightest of faces. “you said you didn’t think mr. collins would give us lemonade to-night and guessed you wouldn’t come. i told you he would, though!”
sanford’s shocked denials were drowned in the laughter of the rest, from which tooker’s voice emerged again:
[119]
“—very wrong, i think, to consider your stomach as much as you do, teller. i’ll have another biscuit, please, arthur.”
kendall found ned tooker fascinatingly amusing. kendall was not much of a joker himself, but he was blessed with a generous sense of humor and he enjoyed ned’s ridiculous remarks thoroughly. presently the little gathering broke up, tooker tugging at sanford’s sleeve with one hand and exhibiting the empty pitcher with the other:
“come on, teller, it’s all gone; honest; look for yourself.”
sanford informed him that he was a “silly ass.”
“i deny it,” replied ned. “i may lack tact, but i’m not an ass. good night, mr. collins.”
“good night,” laughed the host. “come again, fellows.”
“coming along, ned?” called abercrombie from the entrance.
“no, i’m going home with this chap. i want to hear more about his friend meshach fish.” the others laughed and went out and ned turned to kendall. “mind if i go up with you and converse awhile? those fellows are so flippant that i really feel the need of a few moments of serious conversation to compose my mind.”
