The school at large cheered when Kitty followed his companions down the gridiron, and after that, flocking closely along the side line, they watched his every performance and offered him enthusiastic applause and encouragement. Kitty knew well enough that he was being joshed, but he didn’t mind. Fellows were always poking fun at him for one thing or another. Let them! Kitty had his own ideals and pursued them, his own views and held to them. No, Kitty didn’t mind much. Not nearly so much as Gordon. The fullback stood the ribald shouts and laughter and cheers as long as he could, and then walked over to the throng and informed them that this was football practice and not a funny show, and that if they didn’t shut up he’d have Cotting put them out and close the gates. After that practice proceeded more decorously.
Meanwhile Kitty was having his troubles. But the queer thing about Kitty was that he had a funny notion that troubles were things you could get the better of if you put your head down and worked hard. So Kitty did as he was instructed to do to the best of his ability, using up a good deal of unnecessary strength in the doing, and was perhaps after all no more awkward than half a dozen others in the squad. And Gordon, who had smiled for a while at first, soon came to admire the fellow’s dogged courage and perseverance, and was extraordinarily patient and gentle with him toward the last. By that time the novelty had worn away for the spectators and the crowd had thinned out, and Kitty’s return to the gymnasium in the wake of the others was unattended by any demonstration. On the next day he was again the cynosure of all eyes, as Tad so aptly put it, and again on the day following. But after that the school decided that the fun had worn thin.
On Friday Coach Cotting made the first cut, and some dozen youths abandoned aspirations for that season. Strange to say, however, Kitty, at the good-natured solicitation of Gordon, was retained and became a fragment, a rather weighty fragment, of the third squad. Rodney, too, was retained, and whether he was glad or sorry he couldn’t make up his mind. He was confident that he would never survive the next cut, and he begrudged the time that practice took from his studies, although for that matter he couldn’t honestly say that his class standing was suffering any. On the other hand, he had discovered to his surprise that he was getting not a little interested in football. He rather liked the camaraderie of it, and the feeling of well-being that followed a hard afternoon out there on the yellow turf and――yes, and he would have been less than human otherwise――he liked the knowledge that less fortunate fellows observed him with respect as one who had succeeded where they had failed, and as one chosen to uphold the gridiron honor of Maple Hill. And all the time he was growing to like it better he was telling himself that no matter how hard he tried or how hard Coach Cotting tried he would never become anything more than an indifferent player. But meanwhile he did as best he could, and Cotting and Captain Doyle puzzled over him considerably.