ed pleasantly.

Both Dodge and Bayliss started to answer, then closed their lips.

"Won't you please excuse us, boys?" begged Laura, in her usual
pleasant voice. "Here are Dick and Dave, and Belle and I wish
to speak with them."

From some of the members of the football squad went up a promptly
stifled gasp that sounded like a very distant rumble.

Dick and Dave, looking wholly rough and ready in their sweaters,
padded trousers and heavy field shoes, stepped out of the marching
formation as though obeying an order.

The chums looked almost uncouth, compared with the immaculate,
dandyish pair, Dodge and Bayliss. The latter, with so many amused
glances turned their way, could only flush deeply, stammer, raise
their hats and---fade away!

The lesson was a needed and a remembered one. Laura and Belle
took their afternoon walks in peace thereafter.

CHAPTER XI

DIES FOOTBALL TEACH REAL NERVE?

"Get in there, Ripley! Don't be afraid. It's only a leather
dummy. It can't hurt you! Now, tackle the dummy around the
hips---_hoist_!"

A laugh went up among the crowd as Fred, crouching low, head down,
sailed in at that tackling dummy.

Young Ripley's face was red, but he took the coach's stern tone
in good part, for the young man was determined to make good on
the eleven this year.

"Now, Prescott! Show us that you can beat your last performance!
Imagine the dummy to be a two hundred and twenty pound center!"

Dick rushed in valiantly, catching the dummy just right.

"Let go!" called the coach, laughingly. "It isn't a sack of gold!"

Another laugh went up. This was one of the semi-public afternoons,
when any known well-wisher of Gridley was allowed on the athletic
field to watch the squad at work.

For half an hour the young men had been working hard, mostly at
the swinging dummy, for Coach Morton wanted much improvement yet
in tackling.

"Now," continued the coach, in a voice that didn't sound very
loud, yet which had the quality of carrying to every part of the
big field, "it'll be just as well if you fellows don't get the
idea that only swinging leather dummies are to be tackled. The
provisional first and second teams will now line up. Second has
the ball on its own twenty-yard line, and is trying to save its
goal. You fellows on second hustle with all your might to get
the ball through the ranks of the first, or School eleven. Fight
for all you're worth to get that ball on the go an