But Clint’s neighbours were not of overpowering interest to him those days.  There were more absorbing matters, pleasant and unpleasant, to fill his mind.  For one thing, he was trying very hard to make a place on one of the football teams.  He hadn’t any hope of working into the first team.  Perhaps when he started he may, in spite of his expressed doubts, have secretly entertained some such hope, but by the end of the second day of practice he had abandoned it.  The brand of football taught by Coach Robey and played by the ’varsity team was ahead of any Clint had 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!  Paeans!  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 he’s lucky enough to break a leg and get out of it before the big game, he has twenty-fours hours of heart-disease and sixty minutes of glory.  And his picture in the paper.  He knows it’s his picture because there’s a statement underneath that Bill Jones is the third criminal from the left in the back row.  And it isn’t the photographer’s fault if the good-looking half-back in the second row moved his head just as the camera went snap and all that shows of Bill Jones is a torn and lacerated left ear!”