: For the good of the team by Barbour Ralph Henry - Football Juvenile fiction; Teenage boys Juvenile fiction; Boarding schools Juvenile fiction; Connecticut Juvenile fiction; Football stories

@FreeBooksThu 08 Jun, 2023

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FOR THE GOOD OF THE TEAM

A HERO RETURNS

Two boys met in the Grand Central Station in New York one warm afternoon in late September and, greeting each other, passed hurriedly toward the gate beyond which the Hartford Express waited. Each was good-looking, well-built, alert and self-possessed. But a few months separated their ages, although Jack Brewton had seen his eighteenth birthday and Stuart Harven had not. In the train, their bags at their feet, they plunged into conversation. While they had been close friends at Manning School, they had not met during vacation, nor had they corresponded. At seventeen and eighteen one is far too busy for letter writing, and, fortunately, friendship doesn't demand it. There was, consequently, much to be said, and the journey to Safford was half over before the subject of summer adventures had been exhausted. Then Stuart gave the talk a new turn with the careless announcement:

"I had a letter from the new coach about a month ago."

"Haynes?" asked Jack interestedly. "What did he have to say?"

"Oh, nothing much. Said he thought he ought to get in touch with me and hoped I was having a pleasant vacation and all that. Suggested my meeting him in New York and talking things over, but I couldn't make it. The date he set was just the time we were starting off on the cruise."

"Too bad," murmured Jack.

"Oh, I don't know. What's the good of talk? There wasn't anything to be done until we got the team together. I hope to goodness he isn't going to be one of the talky kind: his letter looked that way: he wrote about four pages, I guess. Said he hoped I was keeping in good condition and wasn't neglecting kicking." Stuart chuckled. "I haven't touched a football but once since spring practice. Then we had a sort of a game up at the camp one day. A lot of the college chaps were football men: Means of Cornell, and Davis of Dartmouth, and five or six others. We had quite a scrappy little game. Played two twenty-minute periods. Of course the counselors won, but they had to work for it. I played quarter and got off two dandy runs, one for nearly seventy yards."

"You ought to have put in some practice, just the same, Stuart," said Jack disapprovingly. "It wouldn't have done any harm."

"Did you?"

"Yes, I've been at it pretty steadily for the last month."

"Faithful old Fido!" laughed Stuart. "Well, I don't believe in it. A fellow comes back much fitter and more ready for work if he doesn't wear himself out during the summer. I don't think it hurts you any, for you're a shark for work, and always were, but I get stale if I overdo it. Bet you I'll show more pep to-morrow than the fellows who have been summer training."

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