WINNING HIS GAMECHAPTER IDUD WONDERS
WINNING HIS GAME
Jimmy Logan stood his skis in the corner behind the door and, tramping heavily to get the clinging snow from his shoes, climbed the first flight in Trow Hall slowly and then dragged wearied feet down the corridor to Number 19. Once inside the room, he said, “Hello,” shied his cap onto his bed and sank exhaustedly in the nearest chair, stretching his legs across the rug and slumping down until the wet collar of his mackinaw came in contact with his ears. Whereupon he muttered, “Ugh!” and sat up another inch or two.
Across the room, one foot on the floor and the other doubled up beneath him on the windowseat, was Jimmy’s roommate. His response to the greeting had been brief and delivered in a preoccupied voice, for Dudley Baker had a book open before him on the cushion and held a stained and battered baseball in his right hand. His attention wasdivided between book and ball and had no room for Jimmy. The latter’s gaze presently came away from his shoes, which were trickling water to the rug, and fixed itself on Dudley. He had to sit up still higher in the chair to get an uninterrupted view of his chum, which proceeding elicited a protesting groan from him, and after he had attained it he instantly decided that it was not worth while and deeply regretted the exertion it had caused him. He promptly descended again on his spine, crossed his feet and sighed luxuriously.
The dollar clock on Dudley’s chiffonier ticked briskly and loudly in the ensuing silence. Outside the windows tiny flakes of snow were falling. The shadows deepened in the room. In the corridor deliberate footsteps sounded and suddenly the transom over the door showed yellow and an oblong of light appeared on the ceiling. Mr. Crump, the school janitor, was lighting the dormitories. Jimmy wished that his shoes were off, and his mackinaw, and the woolen socks, but as yet he wasn’t equal to the task. When Mr. Crump’s footsteps had died away on the stairs Jimmy broke the silence.
“What’re you doing?” he asked uninterestedly. There was, however, no reply from the window-seat, possibly because Jimmy’s tones had been too faint to reach there. After a moment Jimmy turned his head and stared across a pile of books on thestudy table at the three or four inches of Dudley’s head that were visible. Then:
“Dud!” he bawled resentfully.
“Huh?”
“What are you doing, I asked you.”
“Oh, me? Oh, just trying to dope out some of this stuff.”
“What stuff?”
“Stuff about pitching. How to hold the ball, you know.”
“Oh!” Jimmy subsided again and another period of silence followed. Then:
“You don’t expect to play baseball for a while, do you?” he asked lazily. “You’d better study how to throw a snowball!” He chuckled faintly at his joke.
“It isn’t so long now,” responded Dud soberly. “They’re going to call candidates the twenty-first.”
“Gym work,” grunted the other. “Take my advice and keep away from it. Don’t go out for the team until it gets out of doors. Are you still thinking of trying for the school?”
“Of course.”
Jimmy grunted. “You’ll have a fine show, I don’t think! Better try for the second, Dud.”
“I don’t expect to make it, but it’s good practice, and maybe next year——”
“You’ll stand more chance with the second, andhave a lot more fun. The second’s going to have a regular schedule this year; five or six games, maybe; going away for some of them, too.”
“If I don’t make the first, and I suppose I won’t, of course, I’ll try for the second,” said Dud. “I asked Murtha this morning if he thought it would be all right to try for the first, and he said——”
“Guy Murtha said, ‘Yes, indeed, Baker, we want all the candidates we can get!’ That’s what they always tell you, and then, when you get out there, they inform you gently but firmly that you won’t do, and hadn’t you better stay with your class team this year and try again next? What’s the use? I like to play ball, Dud, but you don’t catch me putting in a month’s grind in the cage and then getting the G. B. as soon as we get outdoors. Me for the second—and safety.”
“You’re lazy,” replied Dud, shutting his book and stowing the ball back of the pillows. “You could make the first this spring if you’d try for it. You ought to, too.”
Jimmy shrugged. “Maybe so. But I’d rather have a sure place on the second, thanks. Gee, but I’m tired!”
“Skiing?”
“Yes; Pete Gordon and Kelly and Gus and I. We climbed up to the Observatory and then hikedhalf-way over to the Falls. It was piles of fun going down the mountain. Gus Weston took a header and turned over about forty-eleven times and then went into a snow bank head-first up to his waist. But we tried to do too much. My legs feel as if they’d never stop aching! What have you been doing? Been in here all the afternoon? But, of course, you have. I forgot about your tooth. How is it? Any better?”
“Yes. I guess I caught a little cold in it. I wish that dentist chap would yank it out instead of practicing on it!” Dud turned the lights on and perched himself across a chair at the opposite side of the table, his arms on the back, and observed Jimmy in a thoughtful fashion. Jimmy grunted.
“Shoot,” he said. “What’s on your mind?”
“I—I’ve been wondering, Jimmy.”
“Oh, gee!” Jimmy groaned deeply. “At it again, eh? Well, what is it this time, Dud? The other day you were worrying yourself thin because you were afraid you were costing your folks too much money, or something.”
Dud smiled. “Not exactly worrying,” he replied. “Just—just wondering.”
“There isn’t much difference, the way you do it. If I——”
“Not so much about how much I was costing them as whether they’re going to get their money’sworth, Jimmy. Sometimes I wonder whether I’m really doing any good here. Now you look at it this way——”
“I won’t! I refuse! Besides, that’s an old one. What’s your latest worry?”
“It isn’t a worry—exactly. I was only thinking that——” He paused. Then: “Oh, I guess it isn’t anything, after all. Say, you’d better get out of those wet things, Jimmy.”
“I’m going to just as soon as I have strength to move. But I want to hear your new—er—problem, Dud. Come across. ’Fess up to your Uncle Jimmy.”
Dud hesitated, smiling a bit embarrassedly. He was a good-looking chap of fifteen, with clean-cut features, a rather fair complexion and very bright blue eyes. He was small-boned and slim, and, since he had been doing a lot of growing the past twelve months, he looked a trifle “weedy.” In that respect he was a distinct contrast to his roommate, for James Townsend Logan was a stocky lad, wide of shoulder and broad of chest. Jimmy was sixteen, although only four months divided the two boys in age. Jimmy’s features were nondescript, but the result was pleasing. He wore his red-brown hair rather long—Dud said it was because he was too lazy to have it cut oftener than once every term—and had a short nose and a wide, humorous mouth and a verysquare chin. He was a member of the upper middle class, while Dud was a lower middler.
“I guess it’s sort of silly,” said Dud after a moment. “But I’ve been wondering”—Jimmy groaned again—“why I don’t know more fellows, Jimmy, why I don’t—don’t ‘mix’ better. I don’t believe I really care a whole lot——” He paused again. “Yes I do, too, though. I’d like to have fellows like me, Jimmy, as they do you, and ask me to do things and go places and—and all that. Of course, I know the trouble’s with me, all right, but—but what is it?”
“Oh, piffle, Dud! Fellowsdolike you.”
“Yes, about the way they like the steps in front of School Hall. That is, they don’t exactlylikeme; they just—just don’tdislikeme. I guess I’d rather have them do that than not care a fig whether I’m alive or dead. I suppose this sounds silly, but——”
“Honest confession is good for the soul,” responded Jimmy lightly. “But I think you’re wrong about it, Dud. Or, anyway—now look here——”
“I suppose I’m just not cut out to be what you might call popular,” interrupted Dud thoughtfully. “Well, but still——”
“Shut up and let me talk! The trouble with you is that you don’t let fellows find out whether they can like you or not. You don’t—don’t ‘mix’—do you see? If you’d get into things more——”
“But that’s just it! How can I when I see that I’m not wanted?”
“That’s just imagination, Dud. You can’t expect fellows to fall all over themselves and hug you! You’ve got to show ’em that you’re ready to be friends. You’ve got to make the start yourself. What do you do when someone says ‘Let’s do this or that’? You mutter something about having to dig Latin or math and sneak off. Fellows naturally think you don’t want to do the things they do. Now today, for instance——”
“I couldn’t have gone, Jimmy, with this plaguey toothache!”
“Why, no, I guess you couldn’t. But, thunderation, Dud, if it isn’t a toothache it’s something else. You’ve always got some perfectly wonderful excuse for beating it about the time the fun begins. Not that you missed much this afternoon, for you didn’t, barring a lot of tired muscles, but you often do miss things. To be what you call a ‘mixer,’ Dud, you’ve got to ‘mix,’ and you don’t know the first thing about it. Fellows like you, all right, what they see of you, but you don’t give them a chance.”
Dud stared thoughtfully at the green shade before him. “Ye-yes, I suppose that’s true, Jimmy. But I don’t like to stick around when fellows are getting up things because I think that maybe theywon’t want me in on it and that if I’m there they’ll think they have to ask me.”
“Huh! What if they do have to ask you? Let ’em! Then when they see that you’re a regular feller they’ll ask you next time without having to.”
“But I wonder if I am.”
“Am what?” asked Jimmy ungrammatically.
“A ‘regular feller.’ Maybe I’m not. I wonder——”
Jimmy threw up his hands in despair. “Oh, gee, he’s at it again! Dud, what you want to do is stop wondering. You’re the finest little wonderer that ever came down the pike, all right, but you spend so much time at it that you don’t get anywhere. Now, you take my advice, old chap, and stop wondering whether fellows like you or don’t like you. Just get out and butt in a little. When you see a crowd walk right into the middle of it and find out whether it’s a fight or a frolic. And, whatever it is, take a hand. Now there’s some mighty good advice, Dud, take it from me. I didn’t know I had it in me! And let me tell you another thing, kid. If you expect to have a show for the first team you want to crawl out of your shell and rub shoulders with fellows. Get hunky with the first team crowd, do you see? Be—be more of a—well, more of a regular feller, like I said before. Don’t try too hard to be popular, though. Fellowsget onto that and won’t stand for it. Just—just be natural!”
“I guess I’m being natural,” answered Dud, with a smile, “and that is where the trouble is. I guess I’ll have to wait until next year. A lower middle fellow feels sort of fresh if he tries to mix in with upper middlers.”
“Piffle! Lots of your class are thick as thieves with upper middle chaps. Look at young Whatshisname—Stiles. He’s always traveling with upper middlers—Ordway and Blake and that bunch.”
“Ned Stiles has more cheek than I have. Besides, I don’t think fellows like him particularly, Jimmy. He sort of toadies, doesn’t he?”
“He’s a perfect ass, if you ask me. But they seem to stand for him.”
“Well, but I don’t want to be ‘stood for’; I want fellows to—to want me.”
“All right. Give ’em a chance then. You’re all right, Dud, only you’re shy. That’s what’s the matter with you, old chap, you’re just plain shy! Never thought of it before. Look here, now, I’ll tell you what you do. You forget all about your dear little self and get over being—being—gee, what’s the word I want? Being self-conscious! That’s it! That’s your trouble, self-consciousness.” Jimmy beamed approval at himself. “Best way to do it is to—to do it! Tell you what, we’ll makea start tonight, eh? Let’s go out and visit someone. Who do you know that you’d like to know better?”
“I’d like to know Hugh Ordway, for one,” said Dud hesitatingly. “But I guess he wouldn’t care about knowing me, and so——”
“Stow it! That’s just what you mustn’t do, do you see? You mustn’t ‘wonder’ whether a fellow wants to know you or not. You just take it for granted that he does. Say to yourself, ‘I’m a good feller, a regular feller. I’m as good as you are. Of course you want to know me. Why not?’ See the idea?”
Dud nodded doubtfully. “Still, Hugh Ordway’s a bit——”
“A bit what?” demanded Jimmy impatiently.
“I mean he’s awfully popular and has piles of friends and he wouldn’t be likely to—to want to know me.”
“Oh, piffle! Ordway’s just like any of us—except that he happens to be English and have a Lord or a Duke or something for a father. I don’t know him very well myself, but that’s just because he trains with the football crowd—Blake and Winslow and that bunch. But I know him plenty well enough to visit, and that’s just what we’ll do this evening, Dud.”
“Maybe we’d better leave it for some othernight,” replied Dud uneasily. “I’ve got a lot of lessons tonight and——”
“Ha, ha!” laughed Jimmy mirthlessly. “Where have I heard that before?” He pulled himself from his chair with a groan and pointed a stern finger at his chum. “You’ll start right in with me this very evening, Dud, and be a regular feller! And no more punk excuses, either! I’m going to take you in hand, son, and when I get through with you you won’t know yourself. Here,stop that!”
“What?” asked Dud startledly.
“You know what! You were beginning to wonder! I saw you! No more of that, understand? The first time I catch you wondering I’ll—I’ll take my belt to you!”