“And then, Clint, think of following your meteoric career in the papers!  As I nibble at my toast of a morning I prop the New York Herald against the water giraffe and read, spilling my coffee down my neck:  ’The life of the party was Right Tackle Thayer.  Seizing the elongated sphere and tucking it under his strong left arm, Thayer dashed into the embattled line of the helpless adversary.  Hurling the foe right and left and biting the Claflin quarter-back in the neck, he emerged triumphant from the melee.  Dodging the enemy’s bewildered secondary defence, and upsetting the umpire with a dull thud, our hero dashed down the field.  Line after line vanished behind his flying feet.  Shod with the wings of Mercury, he sped on and on and still on toward the far-distant goal line.  Cheers thundered from the encompassing stadium, met overhead, broke and descended upon the head of the speeding runner in a shower of fragmentary vowels and consonants.  Still on and on went Right Tackle Thayer.  Friend and enemy were far behind.  Victory stretched eager arms toward him.  With a last, gallant effort he plunged across the goal line and fell unconscious beneath the cross-bar.  At a given signal a wreath of laurel descended from above and fitted about his noble brow.  The score:  Thayer, 98; Claflin, 0!’”

“Just the same,” muttered Clint, when he had stopped laughing, “I’m scared.  And I do wish Robey had let me alone.”

“Coward!” taunted Amy.  “Quitter!  Youth of chilly extremities!”

“I’ll have to learn new signals, too.  And that’s a beast of a job, Amy.”

“Sluggard!  Lazy-bones!  Dawdler!”

“Shut up!  I wish it was you, by ginger!”

“If it was me,” replied Amy, “do you think I’d be sitting there clasping my hands agonisedly?  Not much I wouldn’t be sitting there handing my clasp ango—­Well, I wouldn’t!  I’d be out on the Row with my head up and my thumbs in the pockets of my vest; only I haven’t any vest on; and I’d be letting folks know what had happened to me.  You don’t deserve the honour of making the ’varsity in your fourth year, Clint.  You don’t appreciate it.  Why, look at poor old Freer.  He’s been trying to make himself a regular for three years and he’s still just a substitute!”

“That’s what I’ll be,” said Clint.  “You don’t suppose, do you, that they’re going to put me in the first line-up?”

“Well, not for a day or two,” answered Amy airily.  “But after that you’ll be a regular feature of the day’s entertainment.  And, zowie, how the second will lay for you and hand it to you!  They’ll consider you a traitor, a renegade, a—­a backslider, Clint, and they’ll go after you hard.  Better lay in a full supply of arnica and sterilised gauze and plaster, my noble hero, for you’ll get yours all right, all right!”

“I don’t see why they need to look at it that way,” objected the other.  “I didn’t want to leave the second!”

“But they won’t believe it, Clint.  I’m sorry for you, but the path of glory is indeed hard!”