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 now, all of them, but it wasn't brilliant football; it couldn't be. It would be a battle of dogged endurance. "I say, my dear, is _that_ a down?" the English novelist wanted to know. "Yes," said Honor, patiently. "That's a down, and now there'll be another because they have----" again she cut short her explanation and caught hold of her stepfather's arm. "Stepper! Look! _Gridley isn't playing!_" He stared. "Really, Top Step? Why, they surely----" "I tell you he isn't playing. See,--there he is, on the side-lines, in the purple sweater!" "Well, so much the better for L. A.," said Carter, easily. Honor shook her head. "I don't understand it." She began, oddly, to feel herself enveloped in a fog of depression, of foreboding. Again and again her eyes left the play to rest unhappily on the silent figure in the purple sweater. Jimsy was playing well; every man on the team was playing well; but they were not gaining. Jimsy King, on whose heels were always the wings of Mercury, could not get up speed in that mud,--a brief flash, no more. She began to bargain with the gods of the gridiron; at first she had been concerned with scoring in the first five minutes of play; then she had remodeled her petition ... to score in the first half. Now, her throat dry, she was aching with the fear of being scored upon ... counting the minutes yet to play, speeding them in her heart. It was raining hard again. The rooting section, in spite of the frantic effort of the hoarse yell leaders, was slowing down. What was it?--The rain? The mud? Was Jimsy not himself, not the King Gink? Was his heart with his father in the darkened room in the old King house? "Of course, I'm not up on this at all, but I'm rather afraid your young friends are getting the worst of it, my dear!" said Miss Bruce-Drummond, cheerily. "It's the longest first half I ever saw in my life," said Honor, between clenched teeth. "Ah, yes,--I daresay it does seem so to you, but I expect they keep the time very carefully, don't you?" She looked the girl over interestedly. "The psychology of this sort of thing is ver-r-ry entertaining," she said to Stephen Lorimer. "Less than five minutes, T. S.," said her stepfather, comfortingly. "You know, I'm afraid you'll think me fearfully dull," said the Englishwoman, conversationally, "but I'm still not quite clear about a 'down.' _Would_ you mind telling me the next time they do one?--Just when it begins, and when it ends?" "One's ended now," said Honor, bitterly, "and we've lost the ball,--on our twenty yard line. We've lost the ball."