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- Herausgeber: Booksell-Verlag
- Kategorie: Für Kinder und Jugendliche
- Sprache: Englisch
In "The Rockspur Eleven," Burt L. Standish crafts a compelling tapestry of youthful ambition and teamwork against the backdrop of American college sports. This coming-of-age narrative is replete with themes of friendship, perseverance, and the struggle for identity within the competitive realm of athletics. Standish's writing is characterized by its brisk pacing and vivid characterizations, skillfully rendering the tension and camaraderie of a high school football team confronting both external challenges and personal growth. The novel draws on the zeitgeist of early 20th-century American youth culture, reflecting societal values and the burgeoning popularity of sports as a microcosm of American life. Burt L. Standish was a prolific author known primarily for his contributions to young adult fiction, particularly in the realm of adventure and sports stories. His experiences in education and sports provided him with keen insights into the struggles faced by young athletes. Standish's narrative reflects his passion for inspiring youth, fostering teamwork, and providing a moral compass that resonates with the values of hard work and dedication. "The Rockspur Eleven" is a must-read for readers who appreciate tales of spirited youth and the dynamics of teamwork. It not only serves as an exhilarating sports novel but also as a heartfelt exploration of character development and resilience, making it an ideal choice for both young readers and those young at heart. In this enriched edition, we have carefully created added value for your reading experience: - A succinct Introduction situates the work's timeless appeal and themes. - The Synopsis outlines the central plot, highlighting key developments without spoiling critical twists. - A detailed Historical Context immerses you in the era's events and influences that shaped the writing. - A thorough Analysis dissects symbols, motifs, and character arcs to unearth underlying meanings. - Reflection questions prompt you to engage personally with the work's messages, connecting them to modern life. - Hand‐picked Memorable Quotes shine a spotlight on moments of literary brilliance. - Interactive footnotes clarify unusual references, historical allusions, and archaic phrases for an effortless, more informed read.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022
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The Rockspur Eleven
Table of Contents
Introduction
When ambition presses against the boundaries of fairness, a young team learns that true victory demands courage of character at least as much as skill in competition.
The Rockspur Eleven by Burt L. Standish, the widely read pen name of William Gilbert Patten, belongs to the tradition of early twentieth-century American juvenile sports fiction. Emerging from the era of story papers and dime novels that popularized fast-paced tales of schoolboy adventure, it situates its action within the familiar world of classrooms, playing fields, and community pride. Without relying on elaborate backstory, the book aligns with Standish’s broader body of work that emphasizes athletic discipline, public-spirited conduct, and the formative power of organized play. Readers encounter a setting shaped by rules, rivalry, and the watchful standards of peers and mentors.
At its heart, the novel traces the struggles and aspirations of a team known as the Rockspur Eleven as it strives to cohere into a disciplined unit worthy of challenging formidable opponents. The narrative dramatizes the process of building a lineup, cultivating trust, and confronting setbacks that threaten the season’s prospects. Training regimens, tactical choices, and the pressures of public expectation test each member’s resolve. While the contests themselves provide momentum, the book’s suspense springs equally from personal decision points—moments when individual motives must align with collective needs—ensuring that the stakes feel as moral as they are competitive.
Standish’s storytelling blends brisk action with accessible moral clarity, delivering an experience that is energetic, straightforward, and attuned to the rhythms of practice, preparation, and performance. The voice is confident and encouraging, favoring clean lines of cause and effect over ambiguity. Scenes of preparation and contest are handled with a craftsman’s care for pacing, punctuated by interpersonal tensions that reveal character. The mood remains hopeful even when obstacles mount, emphasizing resilience and good sportsmanship. The result is a compelling, momentum-driven read that invites audiences to invest in teamwork as both a narrative engine and a standard for personal conduct.
Themes central to the book include loyalty, perseverance, and the ethical obligations that attend competition. The Rockspur Eleven tests the idea that a team is more than the sum of its talents, asking what happens when pride or impatience threatens cohesion. Fair play serves as an uncompromising measure: advantages won at the cost of integrity are treated as defeats in disguise. The emphasis on steady improvement—learning from errors, honoring discipline, and accepting guidance—reinforces the notion that character is built in repetition as surely as in climactic moments, a message with resonance beyond sports and across generations.
The novel’s significance also rests in its place within the evolution of American youth literature, where organized athletics became a vehicle for articulating civic values. Standish helped cement a template in which determination, restraint, and mutual respect function as aspirational norms for young readers. The Rockspur Eleven participates in that lineage, offering a narrative that rewards diligence and condemns shortcuts. Though grounded in its period, the book’s emphasis on collective responsibility over individual heroics has enduring appeal, inviting readers to consider how personal excellence depends on habits that benefit the group—habits learned in practice as much as in public contests.
For today’s readers, the story offers both historical perspective and immediate relevance: it shows how earlier generations understood the formative power of youth competition while prompting reflection on the pressures, temptations, and ideals that still shape team life. Those looking for a clear, spirited tale will find suspense without cynicism and conflict without nihilism. Those seeking themes to discuss—leadership, accountability, and the meaning of winning well—will discover a narrative designed to provoke responsible ambition. The Rockspur Eleven rewards anyone interested in where sports narratives come from and why they continue to matter, on the field and beyond.
Synopsis
The Rockspur Eleven follows a season in which a small-town school organizes its football team and rallies around the ideal of clean, determined play. The narrative opens at the start of term, when enthusiasm for athletics is high but the roster is uncertain. Veterans return with mixed confidence after previous disappointments, and younger candidates arrive eager to prove themselves. Early chapters sketch the school’s traditions, the community’s expectations, and the lingering rivalry with a neighboring institution. Against this backdrop, coaches and student leaders resolve to rebuild the Eleven, emphasizing discipline and the belief that character matters as much as raw talent.
Tryouts establish the competitive heartbeat of the story. Positions are contested closely, with linemen tested for stamina and backs for speed and judgment. A debate over the captaincy underscores questions of leadership and fairness, as some favor proven seniors while others champion a steady newcomer who lifts teammates through example. The selection process is portrayed as rigorous but principled, focusing on teamwork rather than individual brilliance. Once the captain and quarterback are settled, the coaches install a playbook suited to the squad’s strengths, blending straightforward ground gains with careful deception. The team’s identity begins to form through shared effort and trust.
Training intensifies as the Eleven adopts strict rules and a schedule that demands sacrifice. Conditioning drills, signal practice, and blackboard sessions shape a culture of precision. Tensions appear when a talented player is rumored to be ignoring training rules, raising concerns about favoritism and responsibility. The matter is handled within the team, emphasizing accountability over punishment. Meanwhile, the coaching staff stresses fundamentals—blocking low, tackling cleanly, and avoiding penalties—while also encouraging initiative. Friendships are forged through hard sessions in all weather, and the narrative emphasizes how small, repeated choices create cohesion. The team’s resolve is tested but grows steadily stronger.
Early scrimmages and preliminary games reveal both promise and flaws. The Eleven wins admiration for grit, yet breakdowns in timing and coverage expose vulnerabilities. A sturdy defensive front emerges, but the backfield timing needs polish. The coaches adapt, shortening signals and introducing a compact series of plays that can be executed crisply under pressure. A quiet reserve player earns notice for unselfish blocking, and the team’s mood brightens as roles clarify. The story highlights incremental progress—fewer fumbles, cleaner snaps, quicker line surges—showing how a cohesive unit can neutralize opponents who rely on flashy, individual performances.
As the rivalry looms, outside pressures intensify. Alumni argue strategy from the sidelines, and townspeople trade rumors about the opponents’ size, speed, and alleged ringers. Eligibility questions arise, prompting faculty oversight and reinforcing the book’s stance on fair play. Academics figure in decisively: players must meet classroom standards to keep their places. The Eleven commits to winning by the rules, declining shortcuts that could undermine hard-won respect. On the practice field, attention turns to situational football—short yardage, quick kicks, and disciplined coverage on punts—preparing the team to handle momentum swings that often define big games.
Mid-season brings a setback that forces reorganization. A key starter is sidelined, and the coaches must reshuffle the lineup, promoting a bench player who has shown diligence but little experience. The shift requires changes to protection schemes, with ends and backs sharing new responsibilities. Doubts surface briefly, yet the narrative presents adversity as a catalyst for growth. Practices become more focused, and the replacement player gains confidence through incremental assignments. The team tightens its formations and refines a few dependable plays, favoring certainty over complexity. Support from teammates helps the newcomer settle, reinforcing the book’s theme of collective resilience.
Off the field, personal conflicts and loyalties intersect with team priorities. A misunderstanding over a social engagement threatens to disrupt training rules, while a friendly rivalry between two backs tests their willingness to yield the spotlight. The captain and coaches mediate without harshness, insisting that character under pressure matters more than any single play. Small gestures—an apology, a shared study session, a hand extended after hard words—rebuild harmony. The narrative underscores sportsmanship as a daily habit, not a slogan. By restoring unity, the Eleven renews its commitment to the larger purpose: representing the school honorably in the season’s decisive contests.
The final week before the rivalry game centers on preparation and poise. The Eleven studies the opponent’s formations and tendencies, rehearsing counters for brute-force rushes and misdirection alike. Weather and field conditions are weighed, and a conservative, field-position strategy is refined in case circumstances demand it. Leaders emphasize calm execution over bravado, reminding players that discipline often decides close games. The journey to the rival’s grounds amplifies the stakes, with supporters traveling, bands assembling, and local pride on display. The narrative builds tension through details of routine—taping, signals, quiet talks—suggesting that readiness is the sum of countless deliberate choices.
The book closes with the high-stakes contest that tests every lesson learned, while avoiding sensationalism. The outcome rests on teamwork, conditioning, and adherence to the values the Eleven has embraced. Without disclosing decisive moments, the narrative affirms that courage, fair play, and unity can meet strong opposition honorably. In its final notes, the story emphasizes character over spectacle, urging readers to see victory as more than a score and defeat as more than a setback. The overall message is clear: true success in sport comes from integrity, preparation, and loyalty to one another, on and off the field.
Historical Context
The Rockspur Eleven unfolds in a fictional American small town and its associated school athletic culture during the late Gilded Age and the Progressive Era, roughly the 1890s to the early 1910s. The setting mirrors the Northeastern and Mid-Atlantic milieu where interscholastic and collegiate football first flourished, with autumnal seasons organized around Saturday contests, local boosters, and nascent student governance. Rail lines, local newspapers, and standardized schedules enable rivalries with nearby towns and academies. The novel’s attention to training, eligibility, and school spirit situates it amid the emerging institutions of organized youth sport, when communities treated school teams as civic symbols and laboratories of discipline and character.
A decisive historical frame is the football crisis of 1905 and the subsequent reform movement. In 1905, newspapers reported at least 18 football-related deaths and numerous severe injuries, prompting President Theodore Roosevelt to summon leaders from Harvard, Yale, and Princeton to the White House on 9 October 1905. Chancellor Henry MacCracken of New York University convened colleges that December, resulting in the Intercollegiate Athletic Association of the United States (IAAUS) in 1906, renamed the NCAA in 1910. Rule changes prohibited dangerous mass formations, introduced the forward pass (1906), and redefined distances and downs. The book’s emphasis on sportsmanship and safer, regulated play echoes these reforms.
The book is best understood within the rise of organized school athletics and the broader culture of Muscular Christianity, which tied physical vigor to moral purpose. Walter Camp of Yale, often called the “Father of American Football,” helped codify rules through the 1880s–1900s, while Spalding’s annual guides disseminated standards nationwide. Ivy League prestige (Harvard, Yale, Princeton) and the Western Conference (founded 1895; later the Big Ten) provided models of eligibility, training, and faculty oversight that filtered into high-school and academy programs. The Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA), established in the United States in 1851, expanded athletic facilities in the 1890s; at Springfield College, James Naismith invented basketball in 1891, illustrating the era’s belief that structured games built character. The Playground Association of America (1906) and urban school athletics, including New York City’s Public Schools Athletic League (1903), institutionalized supervised competition for youth. By 1906, football’s forward pass and neutral zone embodied a philosophy of skill over brute force. Teams traveled by rail, read tactical advice in newspapers and Spalding handbooks, and played under increasingly uniform rules interpreted by neutral officials. The Boy Scouts of America (1910) further paired citizenship with athletic preparedness. The Rockspur Eleven channels these developments: its practice regimens, coaching styles, and appeals to fair play replicate prevailing norms that athletics disciplined boys for adult civic roles. Its rivalries with wealthier schools, debates over eligibility, and stress on clean tactics mirror the period’s anxieties about professionalism and brutality in youth sport. In dramatizing a small-town team’s ascent through organization and rectitude, the novel participates in a national project to fuse recreation, morality, and modern institutional life.
The mass-market publishing economy that carried Burt L. Standish’s work to readers also shaped the book’s historical context. Street & Smith, founded in New York in 1855, popularized inexpensive juvenile fiction, launching Tip Top Weekly on 18 April 1896 with Standish’s Frank Merriwell. Rapid urbanization, cheap pulp paper, and halftone printing lowered costs, while Rural Free Delivery (federally expanded after 1896) and railway mail sped national distribution. Sporting-goods advertising by firms like A. G. Spalding & Co. permeated periodicals, normalizing organized play. The Rockspur Eleven’s accessible moralized sport narrative fit a commercial ecosystem that linked adolescent readers, schools, and consumer athletics into a single, modern marketplace.
The Progressive Era’s education reforms provided the institutional base for school teams like Rockspur’s. Compulsory schooling laws spread state by state and, by 1918, existed in all U.S. states, increasing adolescent time in classrooms and on playing fields. The “high school movement” transformed secondary education: enrollment rates for ages 14–17 rose markedly between 1890 and 1910, aided by municipal investment in gymnasiums and fields. Faculty athletic committees and eligibility rules, pioneered in colleges, were adapted to interscholastic leagues. These developments are reflected in the novel’s attention to attendance, academic standing, and team governance, portraying athletics as an extension of a reformed school day that prized discipline and civic preparation.
U.S. martial and national moods after the Spanish–American War (1898) also inform the book’s spirit. The swift victories at Manila Bay (1 May 1898) and San Juan Heights (1 July 1898), followed by the Philippine–American War (1899–1902), gave urgency to Theodore Roosevelt’s 1899 “Strenuous Life” doctrine. Physical readiness and coordinated teamwork became civic virtues, taught through drill, calisthenics, and sport. School football’s emphasis on endurance, sacrifice, and tactical cohesion resonated with this climate. In The Rockspur Eleven, the rhetoric of grit, leadership, and group loyalty aligns with contemporary notions that competitive games trained young citizens for national service and disciplined participation in a rapidly expanding republic.
Class tensions, immigration-driven urban change, and the contested boundary between amateurism and professionalism formed another backdrop. Industrial prosperity and inequality sharpened contrasts between elite academies and public schools. The Western Conference (1895) and college reformers policed “tramp athletes” and training subsidies; similar concerns filtered into scholastic circles about imported ringers and inequitable resources. Rail travel and newspaper coverage amplified reputations, while boosters blurred lines between school pride and quasi-professional recruitment. The novel’s conflicts over fair play, eligibility, and resource disparities mirror these debates, presenting a small-town team striving to uphold amateur ideals against better-financed rivals, a narrative that echoes national efforts to keep scholastic sport distinct from commercial spectacle.
As a social critique, the book valorizes regulated competition over brutality, merit over privilege, and community oversight over unchecked boosterism. By dramatizing adherence to rules born of the 1905–1906 reform movement, it challenges the era’s tolerance for dangerous play and corrupt recruiting. Its portrayal of a modest school defeating wealthier opponents rebukes class stratification and the incipient commercialization of youth sport. The insistence on academic eligibility and collective discipline critiques laissez-faire individualism, aligning with Progressive demands for institutional accountability. In spotlighting teamwork across social lines within a town, it exposes the period’s inequities while proposing reformed athletics as a vehicle for civic fairness and safer, modern masculinity.
The Rockspur Eleven
CHAPTER I.A BOY WITH A TEMPER.
Danny Chatterton came up the street whistling a merry tune, while Don Scott lay under an apple-tree back of his father’s house, munching an apple and scowling blackly, although the September afternoon was pleasant and sunny enough to put any boy in an agreeable humor. Judging by the sour expression on Don’s face one might never have fancied the half-devoured apple in his hand was sweet.
Spying the boy beneath the tree, Danny stopped, leaned on the fence, and called:
“Hullo, Scotty! What you dud-dud-dud-doing?”
“Can’t you see?” growled the boy addressed. “I’m eating an apple.”
“Dud-does it hu-hurt ye much?” grinned the cheerful lad at the fence. “What do you eat it for if it makes you fur-fur-feel so bad?”
Don’s answer to this bit of persiflage was a still blacker scowl and sullen silence. Danny kicked the fence and whistled, a twinkle in his eyes.
“Say, gimme an apple,” he entreated. “You’ll mum-mum-mum-make yourself sus-sick trying to eat the ho-ho-whole of ’em.”
The boy under the tree picked up an apple and threw it viciously at the sarcastic fellow outside the fence, who caught it with one hand, crying:
“Judgment! Out! Gug-gug-great work!”
Then he gave the apple a wipe on his jacket and took a trial bite out of it, his manner being suspicious till he had tested it, upon which his face betrayed satisfaction and he immediately took a still larger bite.
“Ji-ji-ji-jimminy!” he stuttered, speaking with his mouth full and chewing and talking at the same time. “It’s sus-sus-sweet! I never knew that was a sus-sweet apple tut-tut-tree, and I thought it must be sus-sour or bub-bub-bitter from the way you looked. If I’d known——”
“Better not come round here for apples after dark,” grimly warned Don. “Pat sleeps over the kitchen, and his window looks right out onto this orchard. He’s got a gun loaded with rock-salt[1], and he’d shoot just as quick as he’d take a drink of water.”
“If that’s the case,” grinned Danny, “judgin’ by the cuc-cuc-color of his nose, there ain’t no great danger that he’ll ever dud-do any sus-sus-sus-shooting. But say, ain’t you coming up to the field for pup-pup-practice?”
“No!”
Don replied in such a short, savage manner that Chatterton paused with his mouth stuffed full and stared.
“Hey?” he exclaimed. “Wh-why not?”
“Because I don’t want to.”
“Well, that’s a gug-good reason, but it ain’t mum-mum-much of an explanation. We cuc-cuc-can’t do our bub-best without the whole eleven, and we’ve got to pup-put in some hot pup-practice if we expect to cuc-cuc-cut any ice with them Ha-Highlanders next Saturday. Sterndale will lul-look for every mum-man this afternoon.”
“Let him look and be hanged!” snapped Don, sitting up and clasping one knee with both hands. “He’ll find out there is one fellow who won’t stand to be called a chump and a duffer by that cheap city dude, Renwood.”
Danny threw the apple-core backward over his shoulder.
“But Renwood is our cuc-cuc-coach, you know,” he said. “He knows all abub-bub-bub-about playing football.”
“He says he does, but I don’t believe he knows half as much as he pretends to, and I’ll bet he’s a great bluffer. Anyhow, he can’t shoot off his mouth at me. What’s the matter with Sterndale? He’s captain, but he permits this Renwood to run things. He makes me sick!”
“So that’s what ails ye, is it? I knew it was sus-sus-something. You gug-gug-gug-got mad because Renwood mum-made some talk to ye when you fur-fur-fumbled his pass last night.”
“I didn’t fumble it!” snarled Don. “He was to blame himself, for he didn’t pass it right, and then he tried to lay it all on to me. I won’t take that kind of talk from anybody, I don’t care who it is!”
“Bub-bub-bub-but the rest of us have to tut-tut-take it,” chattered Danny. “He even gave Sus-Sterndale a bub-bub-brushing up abub-bout his kicking.”
“And the more fools you for standing it! Just because he’s lived in Boston and played football on Boston Common, he takes us for a lot of chumps down here. No stuck-up city chap can lord it over me, and don’t you forget it!”
“But he’s our coach!” said Danny, again. “We don’t know much about fuf-fuf-football, and he knows everything. Highland has a reg’ler college player for a cuc-cuc-coach, you know.”
“That’s all right. He doesn’t play with the Highlanders; he only coaches them; and he knows his business. If we had such a fellow as that——”
“You’d get mum-mum-mad the first tut-time he tut-talked straight to ye. You’re always gug-gug-gettin’ mad and sus-sulking so you sus-sus-spoil everything you go into. That’s what’s the mum-mum-matter with you.”
Don sprang to his feet, his face turning pale and his eyes gleaming. With his hands clenched, he advanced toward the fence.
“You better go along about your business, Chatterton!” he grated. “I won’t take that kind of talk from you, either! You can run your old football team without me, and you’re all a lot of soft-headed chumps to let Renwood lord it over you. Now, don’t make any back talk to me! Go on and tell them what I think of them.”
Danny backed away from the fence and sidled off, as Don came forward threateningly.
“I don’t know but we’ll get along bub-bub-better without ye,” he declared, with a taunting grin. “You’re always rah-rah-raising a rah-rah-row.”
Don had reached the fence, and, in a sudden burst of rage, he tore off a broken picket and flung it after Danny, who skillfully dodged the missile and then hastily scudded away, still laughing.
“That’s right—run!” snarled Don, glaring after the little fellow. “If I had hold of you, I’d make ye laugh out of the other corner of your mouth!”
He kicked the fence savagely, and then retreated to the apple-tree once more, in anything but an agreeable humor.
Pat, the Irish hostler and man about the place, came round to the front of the house, leading Dr. Scott’s horse, attached to a light driving carriage. The doctor, medicine-case in hand, appeared at the front door; but, instead of descending the walk and entering the carriage at once, he came down the steps and turned into the orchard back of the house, where his son was still sulking under the sweet apple-tree.
“My boy,” said the doctor, a gravely handsome man with iron-gray beard and dark eyes, which now seemed strangely sad, “sitting there at my window just now, I happened to overhear your conversation with that other lad.”
Don flushed a little, but continued to scowl, though he had risen to his feet and was standing in a respectful attitude of attention before his father.
“I noted,” said the gentleman, “that you were in a very bad humor, and your words told me why you were angry. I also observed that you flew into an unreasonable passion at the close of your talk. Now I am not going to lecture you, Don, but I wish to warn you. You must learn to govern your temper, my son, or it will control you, to your sorrow and everlasting regret.”
“But, father, there are times when it’s impossible not to become angry,” protested the boy.
“Perhaps it may seem so, but every time a person gives way to a fit of anger he weakens his self-control and makes himself less capable of successfully coping with the trials and emergencies of life.”
Don made a swift, impatient gesture.
“I can’t help getting mad!” he cried. “It’s no use for me to try to restrain my temper; I have tried, and I can’t do it.”
“It shows how much your will-power is weakened already when you make such a confession,” said the doctor, regretfully. “I once thought the same about myself.”
“You, father?” exclaimed the boy, in surprise. “Why, I never knew you to lose your temper. I didn’t suppose——”
“Because I was taught to control my passions at any cost, and a bitter lesson it was, my son. When I have noted how quick and choleric you are, I have sometimes been tempted to tell you the whole sad story, but it is something of which I do not like to think or speak, and so I have refrained. Perhaps I will do so some day; but, in the meantime, I urge you, Don, to struggle with yourself to get the mastery of your temper at any cost, which I sincerely hope may never bring to you such sorrow as an act of mine, done in a moment of anger, brought upon me.”
The doctor spoke with such earnestness that Don was greatly impressed, and he immediately promised:
“I’ll try, father—I’ll try, though I am afraid I cannot succeed.”
“You can and must, my boy. Be sure you have my sympathy, for I know you inherited your passionate temperament from me. Do not fear to come to me for sympathy and encouragement any time.”
With those words, the doctor turned away, leaving Don standing there beneath the tree, watching him depart. The gentleman entered his carriage, and, with a wave of one gloved hand to his son, drove away. Don followed the retreating figure with his eyes till it disappeared from view, and then he earnestly murmured:
“It doesn’t seem possible that he ever could know what it is to be really and truly angry, for he is the best and kindest father in the whole world. For his sake I’ll do my best to control my temper—I’ll do my best.”
CHAPTER II.ANOTHER BOY.
Don’s musings were broken in upon by a familiar voice, which cried:
“Hello there, old man! What’s the matter with you—in a trance? Come out of it!”
Looking up, Don saw Leon Bentley stopping outside the fence. As usual, Leon was smoking a cigarette. He was dressed in a padded football suit, with his cap set rakishly over one ear, and his manner was that of one possessed of unlimited conceit and an overwhelming sense of his own importance.
Don had never liked Bentley but his dislike had not been particularly noticeable, for he was a fellow who, on account of his quick temper and sulky moods, had few associates and no close companions among the boys of the village.
Bentley had a strong taste for flashy clothes and cheap jewelry, being inclined to swagger and boast and use profane language, so it was not strange that any thoroughly self-respecting boy in the village did not care to be regarded as his intimate friend.
At one time close friendship had seemed to exist between Leon and Rob Linton, a lad whose bullying inclinations had caused him to be disliked secretly by those who openly professed admiration and regard for him; but even Linton, awakened at last to his own faults, sickened of Bentley and fell to avoiding him as far as possible, which left Leon casting about for another associate.
Remembering the words of his father and his own resolution to try to control his temper, even though Linton’s free-and-easy manner around within him a feeling of resentment, Don held himself in check, nodded shortly, and said:
“Hello, Bentley. Going to practice?”
“Sure thing,” returned Leon, airily. “Got to do it, I suppose, though it’s a horrid bore. Fellow has to practice to keep in the swim and be a real athlete; and he has to be an athlete nowadays, or take part in athletic sports, at least, in order to stand any show with the girls. If he isn’t right in it they’ll throw him down for some fellow who is, even though that fellow may be as long, lank, awkward and clownish as that duffer John Smith. Why, even a girl like Dora Deland, proud as she is, has fallen to raving over him since he happened to turn out something of a baseball pitcher. You must show your skill, old man, if you hope to cut any figure with Zadia Renwood.”
Bentley fell to laughing over his final words, as if he regarded them as a good joke; but he stopped suddenly as he saw Don step quickly toward the fence, scowling his fiercest.
“Have a care with that tongue of yours, Bentley!” Scott almost snarled. “Because I happen to be acquainted with Zadia Renwood does not give you license to make cheap talk, and I won’t take it from you.”
Leon whistled softly, and then hastened to declare:
“I didn’t mean anything, Scott, so what’s the use to flare up and get mad like that! You ought to take something for that temper of yours. At the smallest spark you go off like a flash of powder.”
Don paused, and his flushed face suddenly began to pale, for he realised how soon he had flown into a passion after vowing to do his best to control his temper, which filed him with shame and vexation over his own weakness.
With an effort, the boy cast out from his soul the anger that had seized upon him, and he actually forced a faint smile to his face, which made it seem rather handsome in a dark and cloudy way.
“You’re right, Bentley,” he said; “I was a fool to become angry over your careless words, but neither Zadia Renwood nor any other girl is anything to me, for you know I dislike girls. They’re all silly creatures.”
“They may be silly, but they’re sweet,” Bentley grinned, in a manner that was decidedly repulsive to the other boy. “I tell you, girls are great inventions, and I know you’d like them, old man, if you’d just overcome your foolish prejudice against them. And Zadia Renwood is a peach, too! I’m sure she’s struck on you, and you only have to brace up——”
Don stopped the speaker with a gesture.
“That will do, Bentley!” he exclaimed, harshly, holding himself in check. “Even if I cared for girls, I’d steer clear of Dolph Renwood[2]’s sister.”
“You don’t like him?” questioned Leon, pulling out a package of cigarettes and selecting one, which he proceeded to roll gently between the palms of his hands, all the while watching Don with a curious, cunning look in his washed-out gray eyes.
“I hate the cad!” broke out Scott; but he suddenly seemed to remember his failing and got a firm hold on himself. “He puts on too many airs, Bentley, and he makes a great bluff that he’s a football expert; but it is my private opinion, which I am willing to express publicly, that he doesn’t know the rudiments of the game.”
“I think so, too,” eagerly nodded the lad outside the fence, as, with his yellow-stained fingers, he nervously pulled a little of the filling from one end of the paper wrapper. “And Sterndale is a fool to let that city fop run things the way he does. Never knew Dick to be so soft before, but I suppose we’ll have to stand it if we wish to play the game. Come, it’s time we were on the field now.”
Don hesitated. “I don’t think I’ll go,” he said, in an unsettled manner.
“Oh, rats!” cried Leon, lighting the prepared cigarette from the stub of the one he had finished, which he tossed aside. “Come along, Scott, for you’re needed, and it’s your duty to play for the honor of Rockspur.”
“By your own words a few moments ago, you confessed that you are not going into the game for any such reason, but simply to win admiration from the girls. I do not believe any fellow who plays football for such a reason can do his best and be of real value to the team.”
A suggestion of color mounted to the sallow cheeks of the cigarette-smoker, and he laughingly retorted:
“That was talk, Scott; of course I’m going into the game to help the home team win. We can’t afford to lose any good man, and so you’ll come along with me. As for Renwood, we’re not the only ones who are sick of his high-handed style of lording it over us, and we may be able to bring about a change, if we go at it in the right manner. Get your suit and come on.”
Plainly undecided, Don leaned on the fence.
“My suit is in the dressing-room under the grand-stand,” he said. “I did make up my mind not to have anything more to do with the team as long as Renwood was coaching——”
