Full-Back Foster

“Great! It sure was hot, though. Bet you I dropped five pounds this afternoon. But I’ll get it back right now if they’ll give me half a chance!” Dobbins chuckled and Myron’s neighbour smiled responsively. Myron wondered how Dobbins and this chap beside him happened to be so chummy. He wondered still more when, a minute later, his neighbour changed his seat for one just vacated beside Dobbins, and entered into an animated conversation with him. Myron couldn’t catch more than an occasional word above the noise of talking and clattering dishes, but he knew that the subject of their discourse was football. He was glad when he had finished his supper and could leave the table.

There was a reception to the new students that evening at the Principal’s residence, but Myron didn’t go. What was the use, when by noon tomorrow he would have shaken the dust of Warne from his shoes and departed for a school where fellows of his station and worth were understood and appreciated? Joe Dobbins, however, attended and didn’t get back to the room in Sohmer until nearly ten o’clock, by which time Myron had exhausted all the reading matter he could find and, pyjama-clad, was sitting at a window and moodily looking out into the dimly lighted yard. Joe entered in his usual crash-bang manner and breezily skimmed his hat toward the table. It missed the table and went to the floor, where, so far as its owner was concerned, it was allowed to stay. Myron reflected that it wasn’t hard to account for the battered condition of that hat.

“Heard from your old man yet?” asked Joe, dropping into a chair and stretching his long legs across the floor.

“Meaning my father?” asked Myron stiffly.

“Yep. Has he telegraphed?”

“No, unless he’s sent a night message. He might. Sometimes he doesn’t get back from the yard until rather late.”

“Yard? What sort of yard?”

“Shipyard. He builds boats.”

“Oh, boatyard, you mean. I know a fellow in Portland has a boatyard. Makes some crackajack sloops.”

“We build ships,” corrected Myron patiently. “Battleships, passenger ships, cargo carriers and such. Some of them are whopping big ones: sixteen and eighteen thousand tons.”

“Gosh! I’d like to see that place. I suppose you’ll be going to work with him when you get through here.”

“Not exactly. I shall go through college first, of course.”

“Oh! Well, say, honest injun, Foster, do you think a college course cuts any ice with a fellow? The old man says I can go to a college – if I can get in, – but I don’t know. I wouldn’t get through until I was twenty-two or twenty-three, and seems to me that’s wasting a lot of time. What do you think?”

“Depends, I suppose, on – on the individual case. If you feel that you want to get to work in the chewing-gum factory and can’t afford to go through college – ”

“Where do you get that chewing-gum factory stuff?” asked Joe.

“Why, I thought you said your father made spruce gum.”

“No, the Lord makes it. The old man gathers it and sells it. Spruce gum is the resin of spruce trees, kiddo.”

“Oh,” said Myron vaguely. “Well, I dare say he will need you to help him gather it. In your case, Dobbins, going through college might be wasting time.”

Joe laughed.

“What’s the joke?” asked the other suspiciously.

“Well, I was having what you call a mind picture of the old man and me picking that gum. Know how many tons of the stuff he handles in a year? Nearly a hundred and thirty: about two hundred and fifty thousand pounds! He has over a hundred pickers employed, and buys a lot from fellows who pick on their own hook.”

“Oh!” said Myron. “Well, how was I to know? You distinctly said the Lord made it and your father gathered it, didn’t you?”

“That’s right; my error, kiddo – ”

“Kindly cut out that – ”

“Sorry; I forgot. Well, I don’t have to worry about college just yet, do I? We’ll see first if I can stick here long enough to get my time! I wouldn’t mind playing football on a good college team, though: Harvard or Yale or Dartmouth or one of those big ’uns.”

“Probably not,” replied Myron drily. “Nobody would. I wouldn’t myself.” Somehow he managed to convey the impression that in his case such a thing was not only possible but probable, but that for Joe to set his hopes so high was absurd. Joe’s greenish-grey eyes flickered once, but he made no comment. Instead:

“You played much?” he asked.

“Quite a bit,” answered the other carelessly. “I captained the Port Foster High team last fall.”

“Must have then! Where’d you play?”

“Position? Left half. End the year before that. What do you play?”

“Me? Oh, most anything in the line. I’m not fussy. Played tackle most of last year. Like to play guard better, though. Football’s a great game, isn’t it?”

“Not bad,” acknowledged Myron. “By the way, who was the fellow you were so thick with at supper tonight?”

“Him? Name’s Keith or something. Played on last year’s team and was coaching the linemen today. Nice guy. Bet he can play, too.”

“Looked rather light to me,” commented Myron.

“Think so? Maybe. Anyway, he knows how to drill the line, or I’m a Dutchman. What time is it? I’m getting sleepy. You weren’t over at the party, were you?”

“No, it didn’t interest me. As I’m not going to stay, why be bored by that sort of thing?”

“Hm,” said Joe.

“What’s ‘Hm’ mean?”

“Nothing. Just thinking. Say, what’s your objection to this place, Foster? If it’s just me, why, say, I’ll get out gladly. Fellow I met tonight told me he has a dandy room in the village. I’m not fussy about living on the campus.”

“Oh, it isn’t just that,” said Myron. “I don’t like the – the atmosphere here.”

“Well, it is sort of close tonight, but I guess it would be anywhere in this part of the country. September’s likely to – ”

“I wasn’t referring to the air,” corrected the other loftily. “I used the word in its other sense.”

“Didn’t know it had another sense,” said Joe cheerfully. “All right. But I was just thinking that if you had to have this place to yourself I could beat it, and no hard feelings.”

“They’d stick some one else in here, I guess. Besides, I wouldn’t want to put you out. After all, you’ve got as much right here as I have, I suppose.” That statement had a rather dubious sound, however, and again Joe’s eyes flickered and the very ghost of a smile hovered for an instant about the corners of his wide mouth.

“Yeah, but the next chap might be more your style, Foster. I’m sort of rough-and-ready, I guess. Don’t run much to etiquette and wouldn’t know what to do in one of those silk collars you wear. I should think they’d make your neck awfully warm.” And Joe ran a finger around inside his own very low linen collar apprehensively.

“I hope I haven’t said anything to make you think that I – that you – ”

“Oh, no, you haven’t said anything: at least, not much: but I can see that I’d be persona non compos, or whatever the word is, around these diggings. You think it over and let me know. I guess that Hoyt guy wouldn’t mind if I got a room outside somewhere. Well, here’s where I hit the hay.”

“There’s no sense in my thinking it over,” answered Myron a bit querulously, “as I tell you I’m not going to stay here.”

“Don’t think there’s any doubt about it, eh?”

“Certainly not!”