seen outside a college gridiron and was a revelation to him. Even by the
end of the first week the first team was in what seemed to Clint
end-of-season form, although in that Clint was vastly mistaken, and his
own efforts appeared to him pretty weak and amateurish. But he held on
hard, did his best and hoped to at least retain a place on the third
squad until the final cut came. And it might just be, he told himself in
optimistic moments, that he'd make the second! Meanwhile he was enjoying
it. It's remarkable what a lot of extremely hard work a boy will go
through if he likes football, and what a deal of pleasure he will get
out of it! Amy pretended to be totally unable to get that point of view.
One afternoon when Clint returned to prepare for supper with a lower lip
twice the normal size of that feature Amy indulged in sarcasm.

"Oh, the proud day!" he declaimed, striking an attitude. "Wounded on the
field of battle! Glory! Triumph! Pæans! My word, old top, but I
certainly am proud to be the chum of such a hero! I'm so sot-up I could
scream for joy. Football's a wonderful pastime, isn't it?"

"Silly chump!" mumbled Clint painfully.

"Yes, indeed, a wonderful pastime," ruminated Amy, seating himself on
the window-seat and hugging one knee. "All a fellow has to do is to go
out and work like a dray-horse and a pile-driver and street-roller for a
couple of hours every afternoon, get kicked in the shins and biffed in
the eye and rolled in the dirt and ragged by one coach, one captain and
one quarter-back. That's all he has to do except learn a lot of signals
so he can recognise them in the fraction of a second, be able to recite
the rules frontward and backward and both ways from the middle and live
on indigestible things like beef and rice and prunes. For that he gets
called a 'mutt' and a 'dub' and a 'disgrace to the School' and, unless