_ CHAPTER X. TWO GIRLS TURN THE LAUGH
By this time training was going on briskly. Four days out of every week the squad had to practice for two hours at the athletic field.
There were tours of work in the gym., too.
Besides, it was "early to bed and early to rise" for all members of the squad.
Even those who hoped only to "make second" were under strict orders to let nothing interfere with their condition.
Three mornings in the week Coach Morton met all squad men for either cross-country work or special work in sprinting. And this was before breakfast, when each man was on honor pledged to take only a pint of hot water---nothing more---before reporting. On the other mornings, football aspirants were pledged to run without the coach.
Yet, with all this, studies had to be kept up to a high average, for no man on the "unset" list could hope to be permitted to play football.
Hard work? Yes. But discipline, above all. And discipline is priceless to the young man who really hopes to get ahead in life!
"You're not playing fair," Dave cried reproachfully to his chum one day.
"Why not?" Prescott questioned mildly.
"You're using hair tonic!" Darrin asserted, with mock seriousness, as he gazed at Dick's bushy mop of football hair. "You're growing a regular chrysanthemum for a top piece to your head."
"Oh, my hair, eh?" smiled Dick. "Why, you can have as fine a lot of hair if you want to take the trouble."
"Don't I want it, though?" retorted Darrin. "What kind of tonic do you use?"
"Grease," smiled Prescott.
"Nothing but grease?"
"Nothing much."
"What kind of grease?"
"Elbow!"
"Now, stop your joshing," ordered Dave promptly. "No kind of muscular work is going to bring out a fuzzy rug like that on anyone's skypiece."
"But that's just how I do it," Dick insisted. "Not a bit hard, either. See here! Just use your finger tips, briskly, like this, and stir your whole scalp up with a brisk massage."
"How long do you keep it up?" demanded Dave, after following suit for some time.
"Oh, about ninety seconds, I guess," nodded Prescott. "You want to do it eight times a day, and wash your head weekly, though with bland soap and not too much of it."
"Is that honestly all you do to get a Siberian fur wig such as you're wearing?"
"That's all I do," replied Dick. "Except---yes; there's one thing more. Go out of doors all you can without a hat."
"The active curry-comb and the vanished hat for mine, then," muttered Dave, with another envious look at Dick's bushy hair.
Nor did Dave rest until the other chums all had the secret. By the time that the football season opened Dick & Co. were the envy of the school for their heavy heads of hair.
With all the hard work of training, Coach Morton did not intend that the young men should be so busy as to have no time for recreation. He understood thoroughly the value of the lighter, happier moments in keeping an athlete's nervous system up to concert pitch.
Though the baseball training of the preceding spring had been "stiff" enough, Dick & Co. soon found that the football training was altogether more rugged.
In fact, Coach Morton, with the aid of Dr. Bentley as medical director, weeded out a few of the young men after training had been going on for a fortnight. Some failed to show sufficient reserve "wind" after running. A few other defectives proved not to have hearts strong enough for the grilling work of the gridiron.
All the members of Dick & Co., however, managed to keep in the squad. In fact, hints soon began to go around, mysteriously, that Dick & Co. were having the benefit of some outside training. Purcell came to young Prescott and asked him frankly about this report.
"Nothing in it," Dick replied promptly. "We're having just the same training as the rest of the boys. But I'll tell you a secret."
"Go on!" begged Purcell eagerly.
"You know the training rules---early retiring and all?"
"Yes; of course."
"Well, we fellows are sticking to orders like leeches. Every night, to the minute, we're in bed. We make a long night's sleep of it. Then, besides, we don't slight a single particle of the training work that we're told to do by ourselves. We've agreed on that, and have promised each other. Now, do you suppose all the fellows are sticking quite as closely to coach's orders?"
"I---I---well, perhaps they're not," agreed Purcell.
"Are you?" insisted Dick.
"In the _main_, I do."
"Oh," observed Prescott, with mild sarcasm. "'In the main'! Now, see here, Purcell, we High School fellows are fortunate in having one of the very best coaches that ever a High School squad did have. Mr. Morton knows what he's doing. He knows how to bring out condition, and how to teach the game. He lays down the rules that furnish the sole means of success at football. And you---one of our most valuable fellows---are following some of his instructions---when they don't conflict with your comfort or with your own ideas about training. Now, honestly, what do you know about training that is better than Coach Morton's information on that very important subjects"
"Oh, come, now; you're a little bit too hard, Prescott," argued Purcell. "I do about everything just as I'm told."
"You admit Mr. Morton's ability, don't you?"
"Yes, of course."
"Then why don't you stick to every single rule that's laid down by a man who knows what he is doing? It will be better for your condition, won't it, Purcell?"
"Yes, without a doubt."
"And what is better for you is better for the team and for the school, isn't its"
"By Jove, Prescott, you're a stickler for duty, aren't you?" cried Purcell.
He spoke in a louder tone this time. Two girls who were passing the street corner where the young men stood heard the query and glanced over with interest.
Neither young man perceived the girls at that moment.
"Why, yes," Prescott answered slowly. "Duty is the main thing there is about life, isn't it?"
"Right again," laughed Purcell.
One of the girls looked swiftly at the other. They were Laura Bentley and Belle Meade, friends of Dick's and Dave's, and also members of the junior class.
"Well, I'm going to take a leaf out of your book," pursued Purcell. "I'm really as anxious to see Gridley High School always on top as you or any other fellow can be."
"Of course you are," nodded Dick. "The way you put our baseball team through last season proves that."
"I'm going to be a martinet for training, hereafter," Purcell declared earnestly. "I'm going to be a worse stickler than old coach himself. And I'm going to exercise my right as a senior to watch the other fellows and hold their noses to the training grindstone."
"Then I'm not worried about Gridley having a winning team this year," Dick answered.
"By Jove, you had a lot to do with that, too, didn't you, Prescott?" cried Purcell. "You put it over the 'soreheads' so hard that we never heard from them again after we got started."
"You helped there, also, Purcell. If you and Ripley and a few others had gone over to the 'soreheads' it would have stiffened their backbone and nothing could have made it possible, this year, for Gridley High School to have an eleven that would represent all the best football that there is in the grand old school."
In the first two years of their school life Dick and Dave had spent many pleasant hours in the society of Laura and Belle. So far, during the junior year, the chums had had but little chance to see the girls, for the demands of football were fearfully exacting.
Laura, being almost at the threshold of seventeen years, had grown tall and womanly. Bert Dodge began to notice what a very pretty girl the doctor's daughter was becoming. So, one afternoon while the football squad was practicing hard over on the athletic field, Bert encountered Laura and Belle as they strolled down the Main Street.
Lifting his hat, Dodge greeted the girls, and stood chatting with them for a few moments. To this neither of the girls could object, for Bert's manners, with the other sex, were always irreproachable.
But, presently, Laura saw her chance. She did not want to be rude, but Bert's face had just taken on a half-sneering look at a chance mention of Dick's name.
"You aren't playing football this year, Bert?" Laura asked innocently.
Bert quickly flushed.
"No," he admitted.
"Of course everyone can't make the eleven," Belle added, with mild malice.
"I---I don't believe I'd care to," Dodge went on. "I---you see---I don't care about all the fellows in the squad."
"I don't suppose every boy who is playing on the squad is a chum of everyone else," remarked Laura.
"Such fellows as Prescott, for instance, I don't care much about," Bert continued, with a swift side glance at Laura Bentley to see how she took that remark. But Laura showed not a sign in her face.
"No?" she asked quietly. "I think him a splendid fellow. By the way, he and Dave Darrin haven't received the reward for finding your father, have they?"
Bert gasped. His face went white, then red. He fidgeted about for an answer.
"No," he replied, cuttingly, at last, "and I don't believe they ever will."
"Oh, I beg your pardon," cried Laura in quick contrition. "I didn't know that it was a tender spot with you, or your family."
"It isn't," Bert rejoined hurriedly. "It simply amounts to this, that the reward will never be paid to a pair of cheeky, brazen-faced-----"
"Won't you please stop right there, Mr. Dodge?" Laura asked sweetly. "Mr. Prescott and Mr. Darrin are friends of ours. We don't like to hear remarks that cast disrespect in their direction."
"Oh, I beg your pardon," answered Bert, trying not to be stiff. But he was ill at ease, leaving the girls very soon after.
Yet, in his hatred for Dick and Dave, young Dodge resolved upon a daring stroke. He enlisted Bayliss, and the pair sought to "cut out" Prescott and Darrin with Laura and Belle.
Neither Dick nor Dave was in love. Both were too sensible for that. Both knew that love affairs were for men old enough to know their own minds. Yet the friendship between the four young people had been a very proper and wholesome affair, and much pleasure had been derived on all sides.
Nowadays, however, Bert and Bayliss managed to be much out and around Gridley while the football squad was at practice. Almost daily this pair met Laura and Belle, as though by accident, and the two young seniors usually managed, without apparent intrusion, to walk along beside Laura and Belle, often seeing the pair to the home gate of one or the other.
"You two fellows want to look out," Purcell warned Dick and Dave, good-naturedly, one day. "Other fellows are after your sweet-hearts."
"I wonder how that happened," Dick observed good-humoredly. "I didn't know we had any sweethearts."
"What about-----" began Purcell, wondering if he had made a mistake.
"Please don't drag any girls' names into bantering talk," interposed Dave, quickly though very quietly.
So Purcell said no more, and he had, indeed, meant no harm whatever. But others were noticing, and also talking. High School young people began to take a very lively interest in the new appearance of Dodge and Bayliss as escorts of Laura and Belle.
Then there came one especially golden day of early autumn, when it seemed as though the warm, glorious day had driven everyone out onto the streets. Dodge and Bayliss met Laura and Belle, quite as though by accident, and manifested a rather evident determination to remain in the company of the girls as long as possible.
Finally Laura halted before one of the department stores.
"Belle, there's an errand you and I had in mind to do in there, isn't there?" Laura asked.
"May we have the very great pleasure, then, of your leave to wait until you are through with your shopping?" spoke up Bert Dodge quickly.
Laura flushed slightly. Just then more than a dozen of the football squad, coming back from the field, marching solidly by twos, turned the corner and came upon this quartette. There were many curious looks in the corners of the eyes of members of the squad.
Despite themselves Dick and Dave could feel themselves reddening.
But Laura Bentley was equal to the emergency. "Here come the school's heroes---the fellows who keep Gridley's High School banner flying in the breeze," she laughed 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. _