A Princetonian/Chapter 6
CHAPTER VI.
A CONVERSION.
Three days after the posting by proxy, Hart worked off his condition in Greek.
This really meant more than it seemed; it left him free to think, and Franklin, who had been coaching him in grammar at odd moments, now insisted on his coming out and trying for the scrub eleven.
"I came here to work. I didn't come here to play games," Hart stated bluntly.
"Oh, yes you did," Franklin replied; "that's part of your course. Your brains belong to you,—but the college has an interest in that thumping old back of yours."
"Well, I don't see it that way," grumbled Hart. "I'm afraid I'd get fighting mad if they mauled me the way they did you yesterday. Just look at the side of your jaw."
"Let not your angry passions rise," hummed Franklin, rubbing his face. "Look here, old man, you've got to come down to the 'Varsity grounds and put on a canvas jacket this noon—you've got to, you know."
"Oh, get out!" grunted Hart.
"But why not?" he kept thinking. Only two or three practice games had he seen and he had no idea that the whole college was waiting for his appearance. Nevertheless, as he had stood at the side lines, he had felt all the excitement of the strong man who watches the struggles of others; he had itched to try it.
"I believe I could play that game," he said, looking at Franklin from head to foot. "I'd just like a chance to put you on your back." He smiled grimly.
"Good! that's the proper spirit," Franklin laughed. "Shake a leg; it's time we were starting. You'll have to play opposite me. I'll make you hustle."
Green's football togs were a little bit tight and very stiff and muddy, but Hart managed to squeeze into them, and as he came out of the dressing-room he found a small crowd waiting to "size him up," as Tommy Wilson expressed it.
There was a grin on the ex-deputy's face, but of course he was a little excited. The grin was occasioned by thinking of what Mabel would say if she could see him now. "Oh! how funny it all seemed!"
"Looks the part," one of the group of pipe-smoking young men observed, as the football men elbowed their way through.
His class gave him a reckless, uncadenced cheer, at which the sophomores smiled.
To make a long story short, Hart learned a great deal in the next forty-five minutes. His respect for Franklin wonderfully increased. He played off side and received a curt lecture beginning, "I say you," from the scrub captain, without answering back, and two or three times he made a tackle, rather high, of course, but successful. Strange to say, he found that there were so many things to think of that he did not have time to get mad clear through. A graduate player stood behind him coaching every minute, and a wild, fierce excitement came to him, and Franklin made him hustle most convincingly.
When it was all over, and he was walking back to college with Terence Golatly, Jimmie James, and Betts, Hart delivered himself of the following opinion:
"Boys," he said slowly, "that's a great game; jingo! Say, really! I'm glad I came to college."
"You've got to use your think-tank a bit," said Golatly.
The poor scrub players walked, but the 'Varsity men rode in a 'bus. As the clattering, rumbling vehicle went by, Hart made a mental statement that, although unexpressed, is worth recording, "I'll ride in that shebang soon," he said to himself.
As the freshmen walked down the path under the arched branches of the elm trees, a gray, bent old man, with a noble head and a kindly smile, stopped and spoke to them. He asked their class and names.
"Freshman or Sophomore, Junior or Senior," observed Golatly, as they walked on after the short interview, "we're all old Jimmie's kids."
It was irreverent in Terence to speak thus of the college president, but his words had an element of truth. 