Читать книгу Danforth Plays the Game: Stories for Boys Little and Big онлайн

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Barnstead met Cruger’s School and Thurston Polytechnic on succeeding Saturdays—there were no mid-week games—and scored one victory and met one defeat. The victory was overwhelming and the defeat, at the hands of Thurston, a heavier and far more experienced team, was honorable. Barnstead reached the middle of the season hopeful and determined. Harry was still on the second team and was still making good. Of course he had much to learn, but he was learning it fast. And the school at large, having enjoyed its sensation, settled down to a hearty admiration of “the kid halfback,” as they called him and looked for great things from him. Some criticism was aired because Worden did not at once move Harry from the second to the first. There were plenty of critics who declared that “young Danforth could play rings around Norman.” Norman was the present first choice for left half, a hard-working but not especially brilliant youth who had already had two seasons on the team. But Worden, if he heard the criticisms, paid them no heed. Harry needed training and experience in fast company before he was ready for the School Team, and the coach meant that he should have it. The second eleven worked prodigiously those days and the first had all it could do to register anything like a decisive victory. To be sure, the second had its slumps, as when, the Tuesday after the Thurston game, it allowed the first to tally four touchdowns and only saved itself from a shut-out by lifting the ball over the cross-bar for a field goal. To even matters, however, the first team itself was only human and sometimes let down in its play and allowed the second to tie or, infrequently, to win.