There was a good deal to see and many questions to answer, since Joel’s father was not a man to leave an object of interest until he had learned all there was to be told about it.  The elms in the yard were fast losing their yellow leaves, but the grass yet retained much of its verdancy, and as for the sky, it was as sweetly blue as on the fairest day in spring.  Up one side of the yard and down the other went the sightseers, poking into dark hallways, reading tablets and inscriptions, the latter translated by West into the most startling English, pausing before the bulletins to have the numerous announcements of society and club meetings explained, drinking from the old pump in the corner, and so completing the circuit and storming the gymnasium, where at last Joel’s powers of reply were exhausted and Outfield promptly sprang into the breech, explaining gravely that the mattresses on the floor were used by Doctor Major, the director of the gymnasium, who invariably took a cat-nap during the afternoon, that the suspended rings were used to elevate sophomores while corporeal punishment was administered by freshmen, and that the queer little weights in the boxes around the walls were reserve paper weights.

Then the line of march was taken up toward Sailors’ Field, where they arrived just in time to see the beginning of the practice game between the Varsity and the scrub.  Joel had been excused from attendance that day, and so he took his seat beside the others on the grand stand and strove to elucidate the philosophy of football.

“You see the scrubs have the ball.  They must get it past the Varsity down to the end of the field, where they can either put it down over the line or kick it over that cross-piece there.  That’s center, that fellow that’s arranging the ball.  He kicks off.  There it goes, and a good kick, too.  Sometimes the center-rush isn’t a good kicker; then some one else kicks off.  Blair has the ball.  Look, see him dodge with it.  He gained ten yards that time.”

“Oh!” It was Joel’s mother who exclaimed.  “Why, Joel, that other man threw him down.”

“That’s part of the game, mother.  He did that to keep Blair from getting the ball any nearer the scrub’s goal.  He isn’t hurt, you see.”

“And do you mean that they do that all the time?”

“Pretty often.”

“And do you get thrown around that way, Joel?”

“Sometimes, mother; when I’m lucky enough to get the ball.”

“Well, I never.”

“Football’s not a bad game, Mr. March,” West was saying.  “But it doesn’t come up to golf, you know.  It’s too rough.”

“It does look a little rough,” answered Mr. March.  “Do they often get hurt?  Seems as though when a boy had another fellow on his head, and another on his stomach, and another on his feet, and the whole lot of them banging away at once, seems like that boy would be a little uncomfortable.”

West laughed.