After all, it was less Dick’s urgings than a word spoken by Mr. Waddell, the pattern-shop instructor, that turned the tide. It was on an afternoon while the try-outs were still going on, and Larry was doing a little extra work in the shop. Passing through, the instructor stopped at Larry’s lathe, and there was a little talk turning upon Larry’s absence from the athletic field when everybody else was there.
Much to Larry’s surprise, the instructor took sides with Dick and the other urgers: it was a student’s duty to uphold, not only the honor of his college in class work, but in the “activities” as well. Larry thought it all over soberly, and that evening made a large and generous concession to Dick.
“This athletic business,” he began, without preface; “I’ve about made up my mind to try out for the foot-ball squad.”
The sudden shift nearly knocked Dick speechless, but he caught his breath and pounded the shifter on the back.
“That’s the right old stuff!” he exulted; “Gee-gosh! but you make me glad all around the block!”
“Hold up,” Larry amended; “I don’t want any more credit than belongs to me. I’m going in because I guess I owe it to Old Sheddon. But I’m not kidding myself any, whatever. If I get in and play a good game, the bleachers’ll give me the glad hand. But off the field I’ll still be Larry Donovan, mechanic, and the son of a mechanic.”
“Confound your picture!” said Dick, half laughing and half provoked, “you ought to have a licking, and if I were big enough I’d give you one! Why, you poor fish, don’t you know that your good, sane, ‘workingman’ ancestry is the thing you ought to be most thankful for? It is the foundation upon which the real America is built!”
Larry grunted and looked up suspiciously.
“Where’d you get all that flowery stuff?” he demanded.
“I read it in a book,” Dick confessed brazenly. “Just the same, it’s so.”
The next afternoon Larry reported to Brock, the head coach, at the gymnasium, offering himself for the try-outs.
“What have you done?” snapped the square-faced, broad-shouldered man-picker who was filling the Sheddon teams.
“Little High School baseball and foot-ball.”
The shrewd gray eyes of the coach swept him up and down.
“H’m; you were the bridge-scrap leader, weren’t you? Come in here and strip and let’s have a look at you.”