“If he’d only think for himself!” grumbled Mr. Cotting.
“If he’d only _fight_!” responded Terry Doyle.
“It isn’t that. He can fight. But he doesn’t seem to know when it’s time to.” Cotting shook his head for the twentieth time over Rodney’s shortcomings, and then, as always, added leniently, “Well, we’ll give him a little more time. He may find himself yet.”
But if Rodney had his times of discouragement, not so Phineas Kittson. Kitty went serenely ahead, overcoming all obstacles in much the same way as a strong-headed bull might walk through a fence by the simple expedient of putting his head down and not thinking of splinters. Kitty put his head down and kept going. In the middle of the month he ousted Farnham from his place at left guard on the second, and the school, which had begun by laughing, now regarded him with awed delight. He made a good guard. His weight, and there was lots of it, was set low, and an opponent could no more put Kitty off his feet than he could upset one of the pyramids. And Kitty developed what Cotting had called football sense. He played his own position nicely, was as firm as a rock on defense and as relentless as a freight engine on attack, and he helped his center wonderfully. Slow he was, and the coach despaired of his ever being otherwise, but it was the slowness of one who performs thoroughly. Kitty as a football player was no longer a joke.
And he took it all with a lack of either modesty or conceit that was delightful. To Kitty it was a matter of course. To sum up the situation in his own words, Cotting was sensible, what? The word serene best describes Kitty’s course and Kitty’s attitude, and only two things disturbed that serenity in the least. One was the fact that he could not wear his spectacles when playing――he had tried it with disastrous results――and the other that practice seriously interfered with his walks. The fact that football was proving a very good lung developer, though, partly reconciled him to the latter objection. But having to go without his spectacles was a more serious matter, for Kitty was lamentably near sighted and for a while felt quite helpless. Tad’s suggestion that he wear automobile goggles that strapped around his head was not accepted seriously.