The Sailor was a little wounded now and then by Ginger's persiflage. Sometimes he held him up to ridicule in a way that hurt. He made no secret, besides, of his growing belief that there was not very much to the Sailor after all, that he was letting the grass grow under his feet, and that he was good for very little beyond getting down to a hot one. No doubt, the root of the trouble lay in the fact that during the first months of his service with the Rovers, the Sailor was less interested in football and the things that went with football than he ought to have been. He was secretly giving his nights and days to a matter which seemed of even greater importance than his bread and butter. This might easily have led to disaster had it not been for a saving clause ever present in the mind of Henry Harper. His dream, as a shoeless and stockingless newsboy, miserably hawking his Result Edition through the mud of Blackhampton, had been that one day he would help the Rovers bring the Cup to his native city. This thought had sustained him in many a desperate hour. Well, Henry Harper was something of a fatalist now. He had come very much nearer the realization of that dream than had ever seemed possible. Therefore, he was not going to let go of it. His mind was now full of other matters, but he must not lose sight of the fact that it was his bounden duty to make his dream come true. To begin with he had to find his way into the first eleven. But the weeks went by. January came, and with it the first of the cup ties, but Henry Harper was still in the second team and likely to remain there. It was not that he did not continue to show promise. But something more than promise was needed for these gladiatorial contests when twenty, thirty, forty, fifty thousand persons assembled to cheer their favorites, whose names were in their mouths as household words. His time might one day come, if he kept on improving. But it would not be that year. As Ginger said, before he could play in a cup tie he would have to get a bit more pudding under his shirt. During these critical months Henry Harper was getting other things to sustain him. Every week marked a definite advance in knowledge. Miss Foldal found him other books, and one evening at the beginning of March, he astonished her not merely by spelling crocodile, but by writing it down on his slate. April came, and with it the end of the football season. Then arose a problem the Sailor had not foreseen. Would the Rovers take him on for another year? He was still untried in the great matches, he was still merely a youth of promise. Would he be re-engaged? It was a question for Ginger also. But as far as he was concerned, the matter did not long remain in doubt. One evening in the middle of that fateful month, he came in to supper after his usual "hundred up" at the Crown and Cushion.