In the village at that moment Tom emerged from Burger’s drug store after his second glass of orange-squiz. He hadn’t particularly wanted that second drink. He hadn’t, for that matter, particularly wanted the first, but a fellow had to do something. He looked again along the almost empty sidewalk in the direction of the school, but Clif still failed to materialize. Tom scowled, dug his hands deeper into the pockets of his trousers, rattled some loose silver and pennies and turned for the fourth time to a bored survey of the left-hand window. Six dozen wrapped bottles of “Buckingham’s Liquid Elixir, the Century’s Greatest Scientific Discovery” made a pinkly geometrical display in the background, while in the foreground numerous boxes, alternately covered and uncovered, of “Tannebaum’s Oil of Amber Soap” added a harmonizing tone of pale yellow. Tom scowled harder than ever and turned toward the more varied offer of the second window. But even this soon palled on fourth acquaintance, and finally he gave it up and set his steps toward school, murmuring a dejected “Heck!” as he set forth. CHAPTER XII DEFEAT Monday was an easy day for both First Team and Scrub, but on Tuesday the hard grind began again. “Cocky” never let a session go by without trotting his squad over to the tackling dummy, and Clif, for one, had grown to hate that limp and headless object with an almost passionate intensity. Perhaps this was largely because his tackling was not of the best and didn’t seem to improve with practice. Mr. Babcock frequently told him that he would never become a really good end until he could make his tackles surer. Secretly, though, Clif considered that he did as well as Jeff Adams, who had asserted his right to the left end position, and a heap better than a lot of the others. He wished he might convince Mr. Babcock of it! The field was a busy place now, for the third gridiron was in use by the class teams, and from around the corner of East Hall floated frantic shouts and commanding bellows and the thud of booted balls. Practice over there was intensive, for, since there were four squads and but one gridiron, they worked two teams at a time, limiting that time to an hour.