Fathers and sons -- Fiction; Runaway wives -- Fiction; Sportswriters -- Fiction
Peter brightened. Maria had a fight on her hands. Rufus Twice was right
behind him even as he had been behind President Wilson. But the next
moment he was again sunk in gloom. They were done with dinner and Pat
asked with unmistakable eagerness, "Couldn't we go some place and hear
some music?"
Peter throttled down his chagrin but before he could answer Pat added,
"Do you suppose there's any chance of our getting in to the Follies?"
CHAPTER VII
The plans of Rufus Twice did not work out quite according to
specifications. Pat went to Harvard, but he failed to make the football
team although he remained on the squad as a rather remotely removed
substitute quarterback. He was not even taken to the Princeton game, but
he wrote to Peter that he would be on the sidelines in uniform for the
game with Yale at New Haven. It was arranged that he should meet Peter
immediately afterwards at the Western Union office. Pat's letters from
Harvard were sparse and infrequent.
"Football is the toughest course I have," he wrote, "and the dullest.
Learning the signals here is worse than dates. You can't even guess at
them. You have to know. Last week Bob Fisher gave us a blackboard talk
in the locker-room and made a comparison between war and football. It
sounded just like Mr. Twice. Maybe Mr. Twice put him up to it. It's
beginning to seem to me as if that man ran everything in this world. The
only thing I've enjoyed much is going round to Copeland's. He's an
assistant professor in English. I take a course with him about Dr.
Johnson and his Circle. I don't care anything about Dr. Johnson. He
seems to have been the Rufus Twice of his day. But I do like hearing
Copeland. The fellows that know him well call him 'Copey,' but I haven't
nerve enough to do that. He has receptions in his room at night. There's
a regular thing he tells you, 'Nobody comes much before ten or stays
after eleven'. He talks about books and makes them exciting. I'm kind of
steamed up about an English woman writer called May Sinclair. I've been
reading 'Mary Olivier.' It isn't much like any writing I've ever seen
before. She just sort of sails along over a story and whenever she sees
anything that seems important to her she swoops down and collars it. All
the stuff that doesn't matter is left out. There isn't much here that
matters, but you can't leave it out because if you do the dean tells you
about it. Do you remember that suggestion you made to me that night we
took dinner at the Harvard Club. You remember you asked me if I ever
thought any about singing myself. I got rather interested and thought
some about going out for the Glee Club, but I knew Mr. Twice would
raise the dickens if I didn't play football. Sometimes we sing up here
in the room. Just swipes you know. I'm getting so I can work out chords
on the piano. I don't know anything about my voice because it's always a
bunch of us that sings together. I do know though that I can sing a lot
louder than the rest.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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