A few minutes later the three boys were crossing the campus unhurriedly and with an impressive disregard of “Keep Off the Grass” signs. And three good-looking, healthy, well-set-up youths they were. Their bare heads—there wasn’t a hat among them—showed three distinctly different colors. Ted Trafford’s hair was sandy, Bert Winslow’s black, Nick Blake’s reddish-brown. Between sandy hair and brown lay a matter of four inches in height, with black hair halving the difference. In build the trio were again at variance. Ted was a big, broad-bodied chap, Bert was slenderer, without being thin, and Nick was at once short and slight. Although Nick was only five months Bert’s junior—and Bert was seventeen—his smallness made him appear much younger. He had a thin face, deeply tanned, and gray eyes. Nick’s usual expression was one of intense, even somber, thoughtfulness. He had, in fact, the appearance of a boy with a deep and secret sorrow. But in his case appearances were deceptive, or, if he had a sorrow, it was merely that there are only a certain number of ways to create mischief and that he had pretty well exhausted them all.
Bert Winslow was a very normal-looking fellow with good features, a healthy color under his tan and a pair of eyes so darkly blue that they seemed black. Ted’s features were more rugged, like his body, and, if such a thing is possible, his complexion was as sandy as his hair. He had a wealth of freckles and two rather sleepy-looking brown eyes very far apart. Ted’s countenance expressed good nature first, and after that a sort of quiet purposefulness. One wouldn’t have expected brilliant mental feats of Ted, but one would have expected him to succeed where physical strength and dogged determination were demanded. Ted thought slowly, reached conclusions only after some effort, and then stuck immovably to his conclusions. He had been three years at Grafton School and during that time his great ambition had been to captain the football team in his senior year. He had attained that ambition and had now substituted another, which was, to put it in his own words, “Knock the tar out of Mt. Morris in November!” Having accomplished or failed in that, Ted would undoubtedly drag another ambition from the recesses of his mind. But at present that was enough. With Ted it was always “one thing at a time.”
Between them, the three boys loitering across the grass represented just three-elevenths of the Grafton School Football Team. Captain Trafford played right tackle, Bert Winslow was left half-back and Nick Blake was quarter. Ted had played on the School Team ever since he had entered the lower middle class, which meant two years. Bert, who was now an upper-middler, had made his position only last season, beating out Siedhof in the final contests. Nick had been second-string quarter-back last year and now, owing to the graduation of Balch, had automatically succeeded to the position. Barring unforeseen and unexpected accidents, each of the trio was certain of playing the coming season through as first-choice.
At Grafton the school buildings stood in a row midway across the campus, a three-acre expanse of level turf intersected by gravel paths shaded by elms and surrounded by an ancient fence of granite posts and squared timbers, the latter thoughtlessly set with an angle uppermost. In shape the campus was a square with one corner rounded off where Crumbie Street changed its mind about continuing northward and swung westward to River Street and, a half mile beyond that, the station. River Street marked the westerly limits of the school property all the way to the river, which, in its turn, formed the southerly boundary. The campus proper ended at School Street, but successive purchases had added many more acres between it and the Needham River, so that now the school property extended in an unbroken strip some two blocks wide from Needham Street, at the back, all the way down to the river. What was virtually a continuation of the campus lay to the south of School Street, but, since it was of later acquisition, it was, for some unknown reason, called “the green.” A tree-bordered path led through the middle of the green to Front Street, and, across that quiet road, an ornamental gateway of old brick and sandstone and lacy ironwork. Set in the right-hand pillar was a bronze tablet bearing the inscription: “Lothrop Field. In Memory of Charles Parkinson Lothrop, Class of 1911.”
Beyond the gateway the land sloped gently to the river, and here was the Field House, near at hand as one entered, the tennis courts to the right, the diamond beyond them, the running track to the left of the gate, with the School Team gridiron inclosed in the blue-gray ribbon, and, further toward the river, the practice field. Beyond that again, near where Crumbie Street crossed by an old covered bridge on its way to Needham, stood the boat house.
But we are too far afield, for our present destination is that of the three boys whom we left crossing the campus. At one corner of the green, where River and School Streets intersect, stood two old-fashioned white dwelling houses. The one nearer River Street had been just there when the land was bought by the School, but the second had stood at the other end of the green and had been moved to its present location to make room for tennis courts. When, however, a few years later, Lothrop Field had been presented to the School the tennis courts were transferred thither and now, save for the two white-clapboarded, many-dormered houses, the green was only a pleasant, shady expanse of close-cropped sward. The old houses, used now as dormitories since the buildings in the campus failed to meet the requirements of the ever-increasing student body, still retained the names of their former owners. The larger one, nearer the side street, was known as Morris House, the other as Fuller.
At a few minutes before six this afternoon the front steps and the adjacent turf—there was no such thing as a porch or piazza on either dwelling—were sprinkled with boys. There seemed to be at least two dozen of them. As a matter of fact, until Ted, Bert and Nick joined them, they numbered exactly seventeen. In age they varied from sixteen to twenty, although only one of them, John Driver, commonly known as “Pop,” had attained the latter age. Pop was, as he laughingly explained it, “doing the four-year course in six.” That was a slight exaggeration, for Pop had been at Grafton only four years, was now a senior and would undoubtedly be graduated next June whether he was willing or not! He was big and slow; slow to move, slow to speak and slow to anger. He played right guard in a steady, highly-satisfactory if not brilliant fashion.
Since this was Tuesday, the fellows who had gathered from various and, in some instances, distant parts of the country for early football practice, had been at Grafton six days. Those six days had been busy ones. There had been morning and afternoon sessions on each day and the weather had been almost unreasonably hot. More than one of the candidates showed the result of those strenuous days in his tired face and fagged movements. Not one of the twenty who had been bidden had, however, failed to respond. Those summons meant a week less of vacation time and an added week of hard labor, but it also meant honor, for only the most likely of last year’s first and second players had been called on. While the fellows were occupying their rooms in the dormitories, neither of the big dining halls in Lothrop and Manning were open and so they were being served with meals at Morris where, in a room and at a table designed to accommodate only the dozen or fourteen residents of the two houses, they were packed in like sardines in a box.
However, none minded that so long as there was plenty of food on the dishes and plenty of milk in the big pitchers. Mr. Bonner, the coach, arrived just as the crowd had squeezed themselves to the two tables and had begun their onslaught. Somehow he didn’t look quite like the popular conception of a football coach. He was of only medium size and height and had the preoccupied expression of a business man with his mind on the day’s sales. In age he was twenty-eight or -nine, had a somewhat narrow face, brown hair and eyes and wore a closely-trimmed mustache that was several shades lighter than his hair. The reason for the mustache was apparent when, on close observation, what seemed at first to be a natural crease running from one corner of his mouth was seen to be a deep, white scar. The mustache didn’t hide the whole of that scar but it concealed the most of it. David Bonner had acquired it in a certain hard-fought game when he was playing end in his junior year at Amherst, and there was a story at Grafton to the effect that his opponent in that contest had subsequently fared much worse than Mr. Bonner had. However, as the coach was a remarkably even-tempered man, that may have been merely an invention of someone’s imagination.
Supper proceeded with as much and probably no more noise than is usual when twenty fairly hungry youths are left to their own devices at table. There was a good deal of loud talk, some far from silent mastication, much rattling and clashing of dishes and, it is not to be denied, some horse-play toward the end of the meal. Two capable if not over-neat waitresses flitted in and out and did their best to supply the demands on the kitchen. Now and then Coach Bonner’s voice was raised in warning, but for the most part that gentleman attended closely to the business of consuming his supper, and it was not until cold rice pudding had appeared as the final course that he entered into the conversation to any extent. By that time many of the fellows, having either picked the raisins from their portion of the dessert or engulfed it with the aid of much milk and sugar, had moved back from the tables to loll more comfortably half in, half off their chairs. The four windows were wide open and a slight breeze was swaying the curtain-cords, but the heat of the day still lingered.
“I’ll trouble you for the milk, Willard,” said the coach, eyeing his pudding with but slight enthusiasm. “Thanks. Traf, I’ve been thinking that maybe it would be well to cut out practise tomorrow. You fellows have been at it pretty hard and this weather is trying. I thought it might be cooler tomorrow, but that sunset says not. What do you think?”
“Oh, we ought to be able to stand a little work in the morning, if we don’t do any in the afternoon. Still, it’s just as you like, Coach. It is awfully hot for football, and that’s a fact.”
“Have a heart, Ted!” implored Derry.
“That’s the scheme, sir,” exclaimed Nick Blake. “It’s going to be hotter than ever tomorrow.” Nick expertly thrust some bread crumbs down Pop Driver’s neck. “We’d all be better for a rest, sir. Just look at Pop here! Overcome by the heat, Mr. Bonner!”
Pop, squirming and muttering, really looked as if something was vastly wrong with him, but the coach didn’t seem inclined to accept Nick’s theory. He studied Pop’s spasms a moment in thoughtful silence and then pushed back his chair.
“We’ll cut it out for tomorrow, then,” he announced as he stood up. “And, by the way, Mrs. Fair will give us our breakfasts in the morning, but we’ll have to shift for ourselves at noon.”
“They’re going to serve cold lunch in Manning at noon, sir,” said one of the boys. “I guess we can get in on that.”
“All right. Next practise, then, will be Thursday at three-thirty. Traf, you look me up tomorrow evening, will you? There are one or two things—and bring Quinn along with you, please. Don’t stay around here, fellows. Give Mrs. Fair a chance to get these tables cleaned off. Good night.”