nd's stepdaughter. "You're
frightfully keen about it, aren't you?"

"Yes," said Honor, briefly.

"I daresay I shall find it very different from Rugby, but I expect I
shall be able to follow it if you'll explain a bit."

Honor did not answer. She was standing up, yelling with all the strength
of her lusty young lungs, as the Southern champions came out. Then the
rooting section made everything that they had said and done before seem
like a lullaby; it seemed to the Englishwoman she had never known there
could be such noise. Her head hummed with it:

King! King! King!
K-I-N-G, King!
G-I-N-K, Gink!
He's the King Gink!
He's the King Gink!
He's the King Gink!
K-I-N-G, King! KING!

Honor sat down again, her fists clenched, her lower lip between her
teeth. If only it were time to begin ... time for the kick-off! This was
always the worse part, just before.... It was L. A.'s kick-off. The
whistle sounded, mercifully, and with the solid, satisfying impact of
leather against leather she relaxed. It was on. It had started. All the
weeks of waiting for the championship game were over. This was the game,
and it was just like any other game; Jimsy was there--here, there,
everywhere, and they would fight, fight. And you couldn't beat L. A.
High. The mud was horrible. It took grace and fleetness and made a mock
of them; both teams were playing raggedly. Well, of course they would,
at first; it was so frightfully important. They would shake down into
form in a moment.

"I don't believe," cut in the fresh, crisp voice of Miss Bruce-Drummond,
"that I quite understand what a 'down' is. Would you mind explaining it
to me?"

"Why," said Honor, without turning her head, "they have three downs in
which to make----" she was on her feet again, screaming, "Come on! Come
on! Come--oh----"

Jimsy King, with the mud-smeared ball under his arm, had made fifteen
precious yards before he was tackled. He was up in a flash, wiping the
mud off his face, grinning. The rooters split the soft air asunder.

Stephen Lorimer looked at Honor and at Carter Van Meter. He always felt
sorry for the boy at a game; he looked paler and frailer than ever in
contrast with the hearty young savages on the field, and he was never
able really to give himself to the agony and wild joy of it.

Honor forced herself to sit still, her elbows on her knees, her hot face
propped on her clenched hands. They were playing better no