Page:The secret play (1915).djvu/192

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the players of both teams and there were distinct signs of sluggishness visible. Dick read the signs and called an early halt. He had been expecting a slump for several days and now, he told himself, it had arrived. He was relieved rather than troubled, however, for if there must be a slump—and there usually is at some time during a football season—it was better to have it now than two weeks, or even a week later. He hoped for a change of weather on the morrow, but scarcely dared expect it.

And it didn't come. If anything, Saturday was warmer and more enervating than Friday had been, and many of the seventeen players whom Dick took to Corwin at noon looked dragged and tired. Not a few more were plainly irritable, always a bad sign, and Dick secretly feared that Lanny was not destined to be much pleased with the outcome of the afternoon's game.

But if the Varsity was not in the best of condition, little fault could be found with the Scrubs that afternoon. Perhaps the prospect of having a real game with an outside team buoyed them up and caused them to forget the fact that they had been listless the day before. At all events, they trotted on to the field for the contest with the North