Two months later, when “Jarvis of Yale” was at the height of its metropolitan success, Dick Merriwell received the following note: “DEAR OLD BOY: Perhaps you won’t be awfully surprised when I tell you that Marion and I have agreed to travel henceforth through this weary world in double harness. She knows the secret of my first performance in New Haven, and when I told her that you took my place she was perfectly horrified. She won’t tell me anything, but I gather that something happened that night which wasn’t on the program. She did say she’d never be able to look you in the face again. If I didn’t know you so well, I should be writhing in the grip of the green-eyed monster. As it is, I’m only curious. Perhaps you’ll put me wise next time you see me. Yours ever, AUSTIN.” But Dick never did, and was soon back deep in the athletic sports of the college. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CHAPTER XXIV THE FELLOW WITH A GROUCH. Jack Kenny was sore. He had been out of humor for a long time—to be exact, ever since the football election last year, in which Don Tempest had been chosen captain of the varsity—but he had done his best to hide this feeling from those about him. Dick Merriwell, himself the best all-around athlete in college, had more than once expressed his belief that many of the triumphs of the very satisfactory season of a year ago had been due to Kenny’s amazingly clever headwork. But the quarter back was not a fellow to foster a long-continued grouch if he could help it. He had a decided strain of real sporting blood in his make-up, and, after the first flare-up of rage and disappointment when he learned the result of the election, he had calmed down and tried to take things philosophically. But with the return of Don Tempest to the helm just before the Princeton game, the old feelings of doubt and resentment came back with renewed force, in spite of the plucky efforts on Kenny’s part to take his medicine like a man. Tempest himself was not a fellow to help matters much. He was a splendid player, and, what was more, a born general in his ability to plan out a game and play it scientifically; but, like many generals in the bigger game of life, he had a supreme belief in his own ability, an intolerance of criticism and advice, and a certain lack of sympathy and tact in his handling of the other players, which resulted in his being far from popular. Men recognized his ability and appreciated the value of his generalship, while they did not care for him personally, which was well enough so long as everything went along without a hitch and there were no fall-downs.