Mrs. Perkins was not naturally an excitable woman, and she looked the very soul of meekness in her respectable black dress and little black bonnet tied tightly under her chin, but if your only boy--the only living out of three--your boy that had been real delicate and hard to raise--if he had dodged the whole field and shot a goal, straight as a die, and the whole town were cheering for him, mad with joy, you might have been roused a bit, too. When Mrs. Perkins came to herself she was pounding her parasol on the broad, dignified shoulders of Millford's most stately citizen, Mr. E. Cuthbert Hawkins, who moved away rather haughtily. Over near the lemonade booth, Bud's father was explaining to an interested group just how Bud came to be such a smart boy. "Young Bud has never worked the way his dad did," he said. "I ain't like some men that rob the cradle for farm hands and puts little lads building roads when they are so small they have to be weighted down with stones in their pockets to keep them from blowin' away. Young Bud has run in the pasture all his life, you may say, and it would be queer if he hadn't some speed in him. He comes of pretty good stock, let me tell you, registered in every strain, if I do say it. Look at that for a well-rounded leg!" Mr. Perkins made it easy for every one to do so. "Eighteen inches around the calf, and tapered to the toe!" He patted it lovingly. "I tell you, there was action there a few years ago!" Meanwhile the play went on faster than ever. Hillsboro scored a goal through the Millford goal-keeper's stick breaking, and the score stood one to one until within fifteen minutes of the time. The Millford boys were plainly nervous. Victory meant the district championship, and confusion to their enemies.