"I didn't get it. I knew that they said something to each other and I thought that would be about it." "The part about Nichols is all right. Those are the questions he always asks, but Charlie Bullitt wouldn't have said anything like that. Don't you know how serious they take football. They'd put a man off the squad for making jokes like that. He winked, did he? They shook him up a long ways beyond winking. I don't believe he said it at all. Who told you anyway?" "I've said nobody told me. It's just one of those things that might have happened." "Don't stand there holding on to that copy," Peter added in exasperation. "The wire's waiting." "But you're not going to send it, are you? It's not true. It doesn't even sound true." "I'm writing this story," said Peter. "Hand it in." "All right." Pat carried it to the operator in the next room. Peter began to write again but all the zest and excitement of it was gone. He had to fumble around and look at his notes. Nothing went right. It was almost three quarters of an hour before he got to the last page. Pat sat across the table from him saying nothing. "All done," said Peter at last. "Where shall we go?" "I don't care." "Maybe there's a party for the team that you've got to go to." "I don't have to go. I'm not going." "What's the matter with you, Pat. You'd think Yale had licked us. Are you sore because you didn't get into the game?" "No, I knew I wouldn't get in. Pretty near the whole squad would have to be struck by lightning before I got in. That wasn't it. I found out this afternoon that Copeland was right. The thing doesn't matter. It's silly to get so worked up about it." "What made you think that?" "You remember that man that dropped the punt in the first quarter, that fumble that gave the Elis the chance for their field goal." "Yes, I remember. He had it square in his hands and muffed it." "Well, that was Bill French. I know him better than anybody else on the squad. He's a corker. They hauled him out right after that muff and as he came off one of the coaches said something to him. I don't know what, but he flopped down on the seat right beside me and began blubbering like a kid. He was trying not to, you understand, but just bawling away." "Oh, he'll forget about all that by tomorrow." "No, he won't and nobody else will. They won't let him forget. He'll be 'the man that dropped the punt.' If we hadn't won he'd be around thinking of committing suicide. It's just rotten. There oughtn't to be things like that." "Well, you can't have any kind of a real struggle without somebody suffering." "Then let 'em suffer for something worth while. The thing's all dolled up in the newspaper stories. You come along with that yarn about Bullitt saying, 'We're going to get a touchdown damn soon' and all that stuff about his getting knocked out." "Well, he did get knocked out, didn't he?"