Every day now Wormsey trudged down to the field on crutches--they had to be sawed off at the bottom first--and watched the practice from a pile of blankets on the side-lines. It was a fine thing, he told himself, to watch the others do all the work while he sat still with four 'varsity sweaters tied about his neck. This was a great snap; he was still on the scrub, was at the training table, and would have his picture taken, would go to the Thanksgiving game free, and yet did not have to get pounded and pummelled. He was made a good deal of now. The coachers patted him on the back and said "My boy" to him. He had a lot of sympathetic adulation from admiring classmates. Upper-classmen whom he had never seen before, but who somehow knew him, came up and said, "How's the leg, Tommy?" At which he hung his head and sniffled, and said, "Getting along pretty well, thank you," and then grinned, because he didn't know whether they were guying him or not. In a few days he could walk with a cane, and he put on his football clothes because they were more comfortable. He limped after the teams up and down the field, and squatted down to see how the 'varsity made their openings, and he learned how to tell, by the expression of his legs, on which side the quarter was going to pass the ball, which nobody else in the world could tell. Also, by carelessly daily sauntering into the cage during the preliminary practising, with a guileless smile on his face, he found out the 'varsity signals, which he had no business to find out. Sometimes he became very much excited during the scrimmages, and once, when Dandridge, the wriggly 'varsity half-back, kept on squirming and gaining after he had been twice downed, Wormsey screamed, as he hopped up and down on one foot, "Oh, grab--grab him! _Please_ grab him! Oh! oh!" so loud that all the field heard it and laughed at him. Then he realized what a fool he had made of himself and kicked himself with his good leg, and limped slowly up the field to study the next play. But conceited as it was, he really thought that he would have stopped that runner if he had been there. He imagined just how it would feel to have once more the thrill of a clean tackle, sailing through the air, and locking his arms tight, and squeezing hard, and both rolling over and over, while the crowd yelled in the distance. And he thought it would be fine to get out there again, and run his hands through his hair, and call out the signals, and plunge the ball home into the back's stomach, and then pitch forward, and push and strain and sweat and fall down and get up again. He had a firm healthy skin now, and had gone up to the tremendous weight of 138½, which was vulgar obesity.