Love stories; Man-woman relationships -- Fiction; Princeton University -- Fiction; Social classes -- Fiction
He had an impression that she looked after him until he was out of
sight. Or was it the dog that still puzzled her? Something of her, at
least, accompanied him longer than that--her kindness, her tact in the
matter of the Planters. He would take very good care that he didn't meet
Lambert; the prospect of Sylvia's adjacence, however, filled him with a
disturbing excitement. He wanted to see her, but he felt it wouldn't be
safe to have her see him yet.
Her picture increased his excitement, filled him with a craving for her
physical presence. He desired to look at her, as he had looked at the
photograph, to see if he could tell himself under those conditions that
he hated her. Whether that was true or not, he was more determined than
ever to make his boasts good.
VI
The day of the immediate test approached and he found himself no longer
afraid of it. Even Bailly one early September evening abandoned
cynicism.
"You've every chance, Morton," he said, puffing at his pipe, "to enter
creditably. You may have a condition in French, but what of that? We'll
have it off by the divisionals. I'll admit you're far from a dunce.
During the next ten days we'll concentrate on the examination
idiosyncrasies of my revered colleagues."
The scholarship had, in fact, been won for George, but the necessary
work, removed from any suspicion of the servatorial, had not yet been
found. Bailly, although he plainly worried himself, told George not to
be impatient; then, just before the entrance examinations, the head
coach arrived and settled himself in Princeton. Self-assured young men
drifted to the field now every afternoon--"varsity men," the Rogers clan
whispered with awe. And there were last year's substitutes, and faithful
slaves of the scrub, over-anxious, pouring out to early practice,
grasping at one more chance. So far no Freshmen candidates had been
called, but the head coach was heard to whisper to Green:
"We'd better work this fellow Morton with the squad until the cubs
start. He'll stand a lot of practice. Give him all the football he'll
hold. He's outkicking his ends now. Jack him up without cutting down his
distance. I'd like to see him make a tackle. He looks good at the dummy,
but you never can tell. He may be an ear-puller."
The magic words slipped through the town. George caught arriving
Freshmen pointing him out. He overheard glowing prophecies.
"Green says he'll outkick Dewitt."
It didn't turn his head. To be the greatest player the game had ever
known wouldn't have turned his head, for that would have been only one
small step toward the summit from which Sylvia looked down on him with
contemptuous, inimical eyes.
The head coach one afternoon gave the ball to a young man of no
pronounced value, and instructed him to elude George if he could.
"You, Morton," the head coach instructed, "see that he doesn't get past
you. Remember what you've done to the dummy."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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