MOOSEHEART MAGAZINE
6
“Goodness! How shall I act now?” “If you love him he’ll admire your taste; and if you don’t he’ll admire your self-restraint,” and Frank Warner’s jaws came together with a snap, as one who has consciously pronounced the last word.
Daisy looked him over, her head on one side, and a twinkle of amusement in her azure eyes.
“You’ll have to be running along, Frank. When you get serious you become disagreeable. Good night! I’ll see you tomorrow evening—no, not before!”
But she did. Frank Warner met her the following afternoon strolling near the college grounds with Jim Drexler and Dick Gordon, the big substitute quarter whose lucky fluke had won for Franklin the week before. Warner did hot relish the sight, but he managed to hide his feelings; He possessed a rich and uncommon diversity of traits —he had poise with enthusiasm, maturity with youth, gravity with ardor. His handsome face was marred by dissipation, but his manner had all the suavity and aplomb of a courtier.
“What an unexpected pleasure!” he exclaimed, as Daisy stopped him with a dazzling smile and nod. Then, in a cooler voice, “Mr. Drexel! And Mr. Gordon, I believe.”
“Oh, haven’t you met Mr. Gordon?” cried Daisy. “Let me introduce you. Mr. Gordon, Mr. Warner. Frank, Mr. Gordon has just been telling me how little credit he deserves for winning the football game last Saturday.”
“Yes,” cut in Jim Drexler, a tall, shy, nervous young man with affectionate, faded brown eyes, “Dicky isn’t getting a case on himself. He isn’t backward about admitting that his run was more or less of a fluke, and that the Hoyle bunch would have stopped him before he got through with his dodging if they had been well versed in the game. But you can’t give Gordon too much praise for playing with us last Saturday. He played his first game of football in the army and has a lot to learn.”
“It’s generous of you to say so,” shrugged Warner suavely, “but it doesn’t say much for me when we remember that Gordon replaced me at quarterback. What am I supposed to know, I wonder?”
“Enough, at least, to keep in condition, sir,” replied the coach sternly. “But we’ll not discuss team matters now.' Miss Wayne is .> not a bit interested in such affairs. I know.” Daisy moved her head in swift negation, but checked herself with a gasp. Her lips and eyes were eloquent of laughter repressed.
Warner bowed stiffly from the waist. There was a glint of anger in his eyes, but his self-possession was faultless.
“You must pardon me, Mr. Drexler, but 1 must discuss team affairs with you. I called at your rooms for that very purpose and found you out. Now that we’ve met for the first time since you demoted me to the scrub team I insist that—”
“Another time, Warner. We are holding Miss Wayne on the public street and—”
“Won’t you excuse us, Mr. Warner?” It was Gordon who flung in with a voice that had an outdoor ring, and Frank Warner, with only a cursory glance at his handsome face that had none of the simpering beauty of a Bouccicault profile, knew intuitively that he was a youth who had gone out into the plains and up into the mountains and had seen Nature as God intended it to be seen. “We were on our way to Miss Wayne’s home in response to her invitation to take lunch there and meet her father. Surely—”
“Mr. Drexler can follow you a little later,” purred Warner. “I know what he intends to do with me. If he will be so kind, he can tell me here and now, and I’ll fade gently away, like a face in a movie-fade out.”
“See Miss Wayne home, Dick, please,” said the coach quitely. “I’ll follow when I’ve given Mr. Warner the information he seeks.”
Daisy hesitated, looked at Warner in a way to make him realize that he had dropped a peg in her estimation, and moved slowly off on the arm of Dick Gordon, who seemed just as reluctant to leave.
“Now, Warner,” said Drexler, and stifled a perfect imitation of a yawn.
The smile faded out of Frank Warner’s face. He snapped his fingers impatiently.
“Out with it, Jim Drexler!” he cried. “Why did you stick Gordon in at quarter and put me back on the scrub? Out with it!”
“Keep cool, Warner, and you’ll know why. I am not a man who goes by reputation. You were
(Continued on page 16)
“Granted, Frank, and thank you for your description of the play that won the game. Now let me relate an incident that happened after the game, when I chanced to meet Jim Drexler.”
Warner gulped back a surge of unconsidered speech and shut his teeth hard. An expression of bitterness and passion played abut his mouth.
“I was at lunch with Jim Drexler in the Mansion House,” continued Daisy, calmly ignoring■ his displeasure, “when Tom Bancroft, the Hoyle coach, came up and said:	‘Congratulations, Jim! Your
team knew more football than mine and deserved to win.’ And do you know what Drexler replied, Frank? 1 heard him with my own ears say, ‘For-
get that stuff, Tom. There wasn’t any science about that touchdown—it was dumb luck. That s all there was to it.’ ”
“Oh, that’s all right,” said Warner, frowning. “It’s customary for rival coaches to hand each other a line of hot air after the game. And it might have been put on by Drexler for your especial benefit. He’s been hard hit by a soft glance from you, Daisy.”
“Oh, what, shall I do—what can I say?” There was a droll quirk at Daisy’s mouth and she threw her hands ceilingward to express the helplessness of her plight. “You are always trying to pick an argument with me. I shan’t permit you, you quarrelsome ruffian. How can you get so warlike when I’m as peaceful as the little country chapels where they lay the stiffies out ? ”
“But Drexler is one of your admirers—you go to lunch with him!”
“Guilty! Wonder what he would say, Frank, if he knew I enjoyed him as a knight and admired him as a football coach?”
“Bah! He loves you, and he knows it!”
“rriHEN you think Dick Lord on is really a fool for luck, Frank?” smiled Daisy Wayne. “Well, the rest of the world doesn’t seem to agree with you.”
“Then the rest of the world likes fools!” retaliated Frank Warner with heat. As a football star, this Gordon person is the funniest large natural object on the contemporaneous landscape.”	״ . _ , ״.	,
“He is rather large,” conceded Daisy. And rather handsome, too,” she added, a gleam of mischief in her dancing blue eyes. “Besides, no less an authority than Coach Jim Drexler says hell become famous in a season.”	.
Frank Warner looked at the girl before him with a curious, penetrating gaze. Daisy Wayne was not difficult to look at. She was indubitably beautiful, with spun-gold hair and eyes of deepest blue
__eyes that seemed to demand truth even as they
gave it. Warner feasted his eyes on the charm of her delicate profile, gleaming in the rose light of the piano lamp like tinted marble against the penumbra of the more distant parts of the room.
“Yes,” he spoke finally with cool disdain, no less an authority than Drexler declares Gordon all right, but you must bear in mind that there is no less an authority.”	,	,	. .,
The most ravishing of smiles parted the girl s
1lP“You are very clever, sir!” she exclaimed heartily. “I wish I had said that about someone else, for I really like Jim Drexler. He’s one of the fairest and squarest men in football today. A״11־ his success at Franklin convinces me that he is a rather good judge of football material;
“Oh, Jim Drexler is all right. He knows the game, but—”
“But—?”	,	,
“Well, he always acts as one who has been a part of epic scenes and epochal moments when he has only normal share of the gray stuff which made Shakespeare famous and got a hand for Longfellow. I don’t like a conceited fellow, Daisy. The most lenient of critics would be obliged to say that he thinks awfully well of himself.’
“There, Frank, I shan’t hear any more about dear old Jim! You’re as hard on him as you are on Gordon. And just look what Gordon did!”
“Do you know what he did—did you see the game?”	.	,
“No, to both those questions, sir. There s a lot about football for me to learn, Frank, but I believe Gordon mystified the Hoyle team by a clever ruse and brought victory to old Franklin.”
“Let me tell you exactly how the thing came about, Daisy,” Warner rejoined with a swift rush of words that fairly stunned her. “It doesn’t take much to score a victory in football when two teams are evenly matched. To carry it further, it doesn’t take a brilliant play to put over enough points to win, for any old thing that results in a touchdown is enough to satisfy the exuberant fans. All of which is a prologue to the Franklin-Hoyle game last Saturday.
We—that is, Franklin—won by the score of 6 to 0, but I’ll state right here that the touchdown was due to a simon-pure boneheaded play which accidentally came through with flving colors.”
“Yes?”
“Hoyle kicked off, and Gordon, who was in my place at quarter, caught the oval and started down the field. Hoyle came in on him, intent on pinning his shoulders to the mat and dropping him hard. But Dick shifted his tactics, changed his mind about running down the field and, turning around, started for the sidelines. This threw the Hoyles off their guard and before they recovered Dick again changed his direction and started for the distant goal line. He should have been shot dead, but for some reason or other the concrete stuff went big. Instead of flopping with a big loss, as would have been the case nine times out of ten, Gordon ran around the entire Hoyle outfit and reeled off forty-five yards before he was downed. Jim Drexler in his palmiest playing days never perpetrated such a bone, but Dick Gordon looks good because he got away with it. That one play, I must admit, defeated Hoyle. Three smashes at the center brought the ball within striking distance of the goal line, and a forward pass resulted in a touchdown before Hoyle recovered from their surprise. Drexler and Gordon have been howling with glee ever since, but never forget that its the loose nut that rattles the loudest and the empty barrel that makes the most noise.”
‘You are very clever, Sir!”
A FOOT BALL ROMANCE
Fit For Luck