"Anyway," said Hicks, with a lugubrious effort to grin, "Thor's announcement shocked the squad so much that I was not forced to explain my Billion-Dollar Mystery!"
"In the famous words of Mr. Somebody-Or-Other," quoth T. Haviland Hicks, Jr., "something has _got_ to be did, and immediately to once!"
Big Butch Brewster nodded assent. So did Head Coach Patrick Henry Corridan, Beef McNaughton, Team Manager Socks Fitzpatrick, Monty Merriweather, Dad Pendleton, President of the Athletic Association, and Deacon Radford, quarter-back, also Shad Fishpaw, who, being Freshman Class-Chairman, maintained a discreet silence. Instead of the usual sky-larking, care-free crowd that infested the cozy quarters of the happy-go-lucky Hicks, every collegian present, except the ever-cheerful youth, seemed to have lost his best friend and his last dollar at one fell swoop!
"Oh, yes, something has got to be did!" fleered Beef McNaughton, the davenport creaking under the combined tonnage of himself and Butch Brewster, "But who will do it? Where's all that Oh-just-leave-it-to-Hicks stuff you have pulled for the past three years, you pestiferous insect? _Bah_! You did a lot; you dragged a Prodigious Prodigy to old Bannister, enshrouded him in darkest mystery, and now, when he pushed the 'Varsity off the field and promised to corral the Championship, single-handed, he puts his foot down, and says, '_No_--I will not play football!' Get busy, Little Mr. Fix-It."
"Oh, just leave it to Hicks!" accommodated that blithesome Senior, with a cheeriness he was far from feeling. "You all do know why Thor won't play football; it is not like last season, when Deke Radford, a star quarter-back, refused either to play, or to explain his refusal. Let me get an inspiration, and then Thor will once again gently but firmly thrust entire football elevens down the field before him!"
As evidence of how intensely serious was the situation, let it be chronicled that, for the first time in his scatter-brained campus career, T. Haviland Hicks, Jr., did not dare strum his banjo and roar out ballads to torture his long-suffering colleagues. Popular and beloved as he was, the gladsome youth hesitated to shatter the quietude of the campus with his saengerfest, knowing as he did what a terrible blow Thor's utterly astounding announcement had been to the college.