Ralph Barbour - Right Tackle Todd

“He can’t keep away from the girls, Coach,” interpolated Lowell, shaking his head sadly. “By the way, Clem here is rooming with that Todd guy that didn’t R. S. V. P. to our invitation, and I told him he’d be held accountable for Todd’s appearance on this here field not later than one day hence.”

“That so? Good idea. We want all the promising material we can get, Harland.”

“You think Todd is promising, then, sir?”

“Why, yes, I’d say so. He gave us a mean deal last year, and I ought to refuse to have anything more to do with him, but I can’t afford to indulge my personal tastes. Todd looked to me like good material last fall, and I told him that if he would buckle down and learn the game I could pretty nearly promise him a job this year. But he got tired of it and quit in the middle of the season. An odd chap. Stubborn, too. He got my goat for fair, and I said some harsh things to him, but he didn’t seem to mind much. About all I could get him to say was ‘I guess I’d rather quit.’”

“Well, as I told Woodie, Coach, I’ll speak to him, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he didn’t see it.”

“Huh!” said Lowell. “He’s got to see it! I’ll make his life a burden to him until he does! You know me, Clem.”

“Yes, indeed, Woodie, I know what a nuisance you can make of yourself. Go to it, old son.”

Mr. Cade chuckled at Lowell’s look of outrage and said: “Well, I wouldn’t bother with him too much. If he doesn’t want to come out after Harland’s talked with him I guess we’ll be better off without him. After all, a man’s got to have some liking for football before he can play it well.”

Clem, Lowell and Hick Powers went to luncheon together after practice was over and then repaired to Lowell’s room in Lykes and lolled about for an hour or so, by which time the summer-long peacefulness of the school was at an end. Taxi-cabs sped, honking, up Meadow street and swirled into the drive that led along in front of the dormitories, voices awoke echoes in the corridors, feet clattered on the stairs, trunks banged and dust floated in at the window before which the three boys, divested of coats and collars, lounged. “The clans gather,” murmured Lowell. “Another year of beastly grinding begins. Ah, woe is me!”

Hick Powers, big, homely and good-natured, chuckled deeply. “Hear him, Clem. The old four-flusher! Of all the snaps, he’s got it. Four courses, mind you!”

“How do you get that way?” demanded Lowell indignantly. “I’m taking six the first half-year!”

“Yeah, four required and two snaps! Bible History or – or Eskimo Literature, or something! Gee, it doesn’t take much to get you guys through your senior year!”

“But think how we worked to get there!” laughed Clem. “You’re junior, aren’t you, Hick?”

“Sure! Finest class in school! First in war, first in peace, first – ”

“First at table,” ended Lowell. “What time is it?”

“Twelve after two,” answered Clem. “Guess I’d better mosey along and see if Jim Todd’s arrived.”

“Oh, don’t go,” protested Lowell. “We’re just beginning to like you. What time’s he due?”

“I don’t know. Maybe he won’t get in until late. I suppose it takes quite a while to get here from Maine.”

“Sure. Two or three days. You do the first thousand miles on snowshoes. Then you take a dog-sled at the trading post – ”

“You’re a nut,” laughed Clem. “I’m sorry for you, Hick. How do you think you’re going to get through nearly nine months with him?”

“Oh, he won’t get funny with me,” answered Hick comfortably. “I’ll give him a paddling every now and then. I’ll make a new man of him by Spring.”

“You, you big flat tire!” responded Lowell. “It would take three like you to paddle me! If it wasn’t so hot I’d box your ears for making a crack like that right in front of visitors!”

Clem’s progress from Lykes to Haylow was retarded by encounters with several acquaintances, and once, having passed the corner of his own building, he spent ten minutes with his arms on the window-sill of a lower-floor room talking to the inmates of it. But he reached his corridor eventually and found the door of Number 15 ajar. As he had closed it behind him in the morning he reached the conclusion that Jim had arrived, and when he had thrust it farther inward and crossed the threshold he decided that the conclusion was correct. Then, as the occupant of the room straightened up from the business of unpacking a suit-case opened on the window-seat, he was in doubt for an instant. If this was Jim, what had happened to him?

After they had shaken hands, Clem took a good look at his new room-mate. The change in Jim’s appearance was due to two things, he decided. In the first place, Jim was dressed differently. He wore trousers of a grayish brown, a white negligee shirt with a small blue stripe, a semi-soft collar and a neatly tied dark-blue four-in-hand. The shoes were brown Oxfords and evidently new. The coat that matched the trousers was laid over the back of a chair. That suit, Clem reflected, had probably cost very little, but it fitted extremely well and looked well, too. Then Jim had filled out remarkably. He was still a long way from stout, but there was flesh enough now on his tall frame to take away the lanky look that had been his most striking feature last year. He seemed to hold himself straighter, too, as though he had become accustomed to his height, and to move with far less of awkwardness.

“What have you been doing to yourself?” asked Clem.

Jim stared questioningly. Apparently he was not aware of any change, and Clem explained. “Well, you look twenty pounds heavier, Jim; maybe more; and – ” But he stopped there. To approve his present attire would be tantamount to a criticism of his former.

“Yes, I guess I am heavier,” replied Jim. “I got mighty good food up at Blaisdell’s, and a heap of it; and then I was outdoors most of the time. Right healthy sort of life, I guess. Didn’t work hard, either; not really work .”

“I suppose it was pretty good fun,” mused Clem. “I’d liked to have got up there for a few days, but it didn’t seem possible.”

“Wish you had. I’d have shown you some real fishing. Like to fish, Harland?”

“N-no, I don’t believe I do. Maybe because I’ve never done much. But it sounded pretty good, what you wrote, and if father hadn’t arranged a motor trip for the last part of the summer I think I’d have gone up there for three or four days.”

“Guess you thought that was pretty cheeky, that letter of mine,” said Jim consciously.

“Not a bit,” Clem assured him heartily. If he had, he had forgotten it now. “Awfully glad to have you, Jim.”

“I hope you mean that.” Jim laughed sheepishly. “I tried hard to get that letter back after I’d posted it, but it happened that the fellow who carried the mail out got started half an hour earlier that morning, and I was too late.”

“Glad you were,” said Clem, and meant it. “Hope you don’t mind having Mart’s things left around. He thinks now he will come back next year and finish out.”

Jim looked about the room and shook his head. “Mighty nice,” he said. “I’ve got a few things upstairs that I’ll have to move out, but they ain’t scarcely suitable for here: there’s a cushion and a couple of pictures and a sort of a thing for books and two, three little things besides.”

“Bring them down and we’ll look them over,” said Clem. “What you don’t want to use can go in your trunk when you send it down to the store-room. Don’t believe we need any more cushions, though.” He thought he knew which of the cushions in Number 29 was Jim’s! “Too much in a place is worse than too little, eh?”