“You’re a big fool, Dick Sumner, or you’d know that it’s a lot harder thing to get off a team of your own accord when you’re on it, than to get put on when you’re off. I’d be proud of him if he was my brother. Besides, he’ll get back.”
“The team’s playing a lot better since he’s off; everybody says so,” answered Dick, bound to maintain his position, yet secretly pleased at this authoritative recognition of his brother’s merits.
“It isn’t because he’s off, it’s because Jason Dunn’s off. He never was any good. I knew it all the time. He’s afraid of any fellow his size.”
Dick had nothing to say in favor of Jason Dunn, so he took another tack.
“Newbury’ll beat ’em anyway, so what difference does it make?”
“It may make a lot of difference,” answered the oracle of the fifth. “Newbury may beat us, and they may not. If big Bumpus doesn’t bust, we’re going to have a solid line, and the ends are great! It’ll be a corking game all right, whichever wins. And you don’t want to go around saying we’re going to be licked!”
“I don’t say it to anybody but you,” Dick interposed hastily.
“You don’t want to say it to any one,” continued Mike, with a severity quite judicial. “Just try to make everybody think we’re going to win. You know how Phillips had us all scared when the fourth played Suffolk, with his talk about how big and strong they were, and how we couldn’t possibly down ’em, and all that, till we lost our nerve and almost let ’em beat us?”
“It’s the same with the big team; they’ve got to be encouraged. Harrison deserves it, too, for firing Jason.”
This principle Mike had an opportunity to put into practice the next morning when he passed a knot of older boys gathered at the corner of the school building, where they waited for the nine o’clock bell to ring and meantime swapped news and jokes and covertly watched the girls who by twos and threes and fours passed on the other side of the street on the way to Miss Wheeler’s school. Eaton reached out and seized the boy by the shoulder. “Ticket for the game?” he demanded.
“Got one,” said Mike, coolly, shaking himself free.
“What do you say, Mike,” asked Wilmot; “are we going to beat Newbury?”
“Sure thing, only they’ve got to get those forward passes down better.”