What happened at Mooney’s Wednesday night Bert didn’t learn. He was asleep when Chick returned, and since the latter made no mention of the previous evening’s events when morning came Bert didn’t inquire. Chick seemed in good spirits, whistling while he dressed, but Bert more than half suspected that much of the gayety was assumed. As a matter of fact, Chick was not the sort to arise from bed blithe and singing. It usually took him ten minutes to get his eyes thoroughly open, and during that period he was more the bear with the sore head than the nightingale! So if Chick whistled with intent to deceive he selected the wrong method. Bert was rather too taken up with his own affairs for the rest of that week to pay very much attention to Chick’s, nevertheless he did make note of the fact that neither on Thursday nor Friday evenings did Chick resort to Mooney’s. Evidently then Chick had decided to act on Bert’s suggestion and allow Mr. Lester Devore’s phenomenal luck at pool to become exhausted. Perhaps, too, although he had not accepted Bert’s hint with much enthusiasm, Chick thought it wise to take no chances. Certain it was that he got to bed both nights by ten o’clock, or almost, and that his performances on the gridiron seemed animated by more vim. Meanwhile Bert discovered that from an unimportant third substitute he had advanced in the period of a few days to the rôle of a player of consequence. Perhaps the degree of consequence wasn’t great, but certain it was that he never failed to get into the scrimmage line-up and that Coach Cade, suddenly and rather disconcertingly aware of his existence, gave him a good deal of attention. The attention was sometimes embarrassing, as when on Wednesday afternoon Bert balled a play all up and found himself on his back with two of the enemy kneeling on his diaphragm and the pigskin, tightly clasped, some six yards back of the point it had started from. Bert had heard of coaches who became tempestuous and profane under less provocation, but Mr. Cade was not one of them. Mr. Cade might raise his voice a note or two, but he never lost control of it--or of himself. He didn’t even call names; that is, not hard names. He might refer in a gentlemanly manner to a fellow’s apparent lack of mentality and address him as a “poor goat,” or he might, in cases where a lineman failed to show sufficient aggression, use the allowable term “loafer.” But such appellations left no smart. However, it is not to be assumed from this that Mr. Cade was tongue-tied. Not a bit of it. He had a surprising command of the English language and a remarkable fluency in the use of it. He also displayed a positive genius in the correct choice of words. If one could only remain sufficiently detached, as it were, during one of Johnny’s best orations one could without a doubt vastly improve one’s rhetoric.