“How on earth did you get to know so much about football?” asked Neil.  “You talk like a varsity coach.”

“Do I?” said Sydney, flushing with pleasure.  “I—­I always liked the game, and I’ve studied it quite a bit and watched it all I could.  Of course, I can never play, but I get a good deal of enjoyment out of it.  Sometimes”—­his shyness returned momentarily and he hesitated—­“sometimes I make believe that I’m playing, you know; put myself, in imagination, in the place of one of the team.  To-day I—­to-day I was you,” he added with a deprecatory laugh.

“You don’t say?” cried Neil.  Then the pathos of it struck him and he was silent a moment.  The cripple’s love and longing for sport in which he could never hope to join seemed terribly sad and gave him a choking sensation in his throat.

“If I had been—­like other fellows,” continued Sydney, quite cheerfully, “I should have played everything—­football, baseball, hockey, tennis—­everything!  I’d give—­anything I’ve got—­if I could just run from here to the corner.”  He was silent a minute, looking before him with eyes from which the usual brightness was gone.  Then, “My, it must be good to run and walk and jump around just as you want to,” he sighed.

“Yes,” muttered Neil, “but—­but that was a good little run you made to-day.”  Sydney looked puzzled, then laughed.

“In the game, you mean?  Yes, wasn’t it?  And I made a touch-down and won the game.  I was awfully afraid at one time that that Woodby quarter-back was going to nab me; that’s why I made for the corner of the field like that.”

“I fancied that was the reason,” answered Neil gravely.  Then their eyes met and they laughed together.

“Your friend Gale didn’t play so well to-day,” said Sydney presently.  Neil shook his head with a troubled air.

“No, he played rotten ball, and that’s a fact.  I don’t know what’s got into him of late.  He doesn’t seem to care whether he pleases Mills or not.  I think it’s that chap Cowan.  He tells Paul that Mills and Devoe are imposing on him and that he isn’t getting a fair show and all that sort of stuff.  Know Cowan?”

“Only by sight.  I don’t think I’d care to know him; he looks a good deal like—­like—­”

“Just so,” laughed Neil.  “That’s the way he strikes me.”

After dinner that evening Paul bewailed what he called his ill luck.  Neil listened patiently for a while; then—­

“Look here, Paul,” he said, “don’t talk such rot.  Luck had nothing to do with it, and you know it.  The trouble was that you weren’t in shape; you’ve been shilly-shallying around of late and just doing good enough work to keep Mills from dropping you to the scrub.  It’s that miserable idiot Tom Cowan that’s to blame; he’s been filling your head with nonsense; telling you that you are so good that you don’t have to practise, and that Mills doesn’t dare drop you, and lots of poppycock of that kind.  Now, I’ll tell you, chum, that the best thing to do is to go honestly to work and do your best.”