"You talk like a varsity coach."

"Do I?" said Sydney, flushing with pleasure. "I--I always liked the
game, and I've studied it quite a bit and watched it all I could. Of
course, I can never play, but I get a good deal of enjoyment out of it.
Sometimes"--his shyness returned momentarily and he hesitated--"sometimes
I make believe that I'm playing, you know; put myself, in imagination,
in the place of one of the team. To-day I--to-day I was you," he added
with a deprecatory laugh.

"You don't say?" cried Neil. Then the pathos of it struck him and he was
silent a moment. The cripple's love and longing for sport in which he
could never hope to join seemed terribly sad and gave him a choking
sensation in his throat.

"If I had been--like other fellows," continued Sydney, quite cheerfully,
"I should have played everything--football, baseball, hockey,
tennis--everything! I'd give--anything I've got--if I could just run
from here to the corner." He was silent a minute, looking before him
with eyes from which the usual brightness was gone. Then, "My, it must
be good to run and walk and jump around just as you want to," he sighed.

"Yes," muttered Neil, "but--but that was a good little run you made
to-day." Sydney looked puzzled, then laughed.

"In the game, you mean? Yes, wasn't it? And I made a touch-down and won
the game. I was awfully afraid at one time that that Woodby quarter-back
was going to nab me; that's why I made for the corner of the field
like that."