d, old top, but I
certainly am proud to be the chum of such a hero! I'm so sot-up I could
scream for joy. Football's a wonderful pastime, isn't it?"

"Silly chump!" mumbled Clint painfully.

"Yes, indeed, a wonderful pastime," ruminated Amy, seating himself on
the window-seat and hugging one knee. "All a fellow has to do is to go
out and work like a dray-horse and a pile-driver and street-roller for a
couple of hours every afternoon, get kicked in the shins and biffed in
the eye and rolled in the dirt and ragged by one coach, one captain and
one quarter-back. That's all he has to do except learn a lot of signals
so he can recognise them in the fraction of a second, be able to recite
the rules frontward and backward and both ways from the middle and live
on indigestible things like beef and rice and prunes. For that he gets
called a 'mutt' and a 'dub' and a 'disgrace to the School' and, unless
he's lucky enough to break a leg and get out of it before the big game,
he has twenty-fours hours of heart-disease and sixty minutes of glory.
And his picture in the paper. He knows it's his picture because there's
a statement underneath that Bill Jones is the third criminal from the
left in the back row. And it isn't the photographer's fault if the
good-looking half-back in the second row moved his head just as the
camera went _snap_ and all that shows of Bill Jones is a torn and
lacerated left ear!"

"For the love of Mike, Amy, shut up!" pleaded Clint. "You talk so much
you don't say anything! Besides, you told me once you used to play
yourself when you first came here."

"So I did," agreed Amy calmly. "But I saw the error of my ways and quit.
In me you see a brand snatched from the burning. Why, gosh, if I'd kept
on I'd be a popular hero now! First Formers would copy my socks and
neckties and say 'Good morning, _Mister_ Byrd,' and the _Review_ would
refer to me as 'that sterling player, Full-back Byrd.' And Harvard and
Yale and Princeton scouts would be camping on my trail and offering me
valuable presents and taking me to lunch at clubs. Oh, I had a narrow
escape, I can tell you! When I think how narrow I shudder." He proved it
by having a sort of convulsion on the window-seat. "Clint, when it's all
said and done, a fellow's a perfect, A-plus fool to play football when
he can enlist in the German army and die in a trench!"

"I got away for twenty yards this afternoon and made a touchdown,"
proclaimed Clint from between swo