The Turner Twins

When the meal was over the twins went outside and, following the example set by others, made themselves comfortable on the grass beyond the walk. Near by, two older boys were conversing earnestly, and Ned and Laurie, having exhausted their own subjects of conversation, found themselves listening.

“We’ve got to do it,” the larger of the two was saying. “Dave’s going to call a meeting of the school for Friday evening, and Mr. Wells is going to talk to them. I’ll talk too. Maybe you’d better, Frank. You can tell them a funny story and get them feeling generous.”

“Nothing doing, Joe. Leave me out of it. I never could talk from a platform. Anyway, it’s the fellows’ duty to provide money. If they don’t, they won’t have a team. They understand that – or they will when you tell them. There’s another thing, though, Joe, that we’ve got to have besides money, and that’s material. We’ve got to get more fellows out.”

“I know. I’ll tell them that, too. I’m going to put a notice up in School Hall in the morning. Mr. Cummins says there are eight new fellows entering the middle classes this year. Maybe some of them are football-players.”

“Bound to be. Did you see the twins?”

“No, but Billy Emerson was telling me about them. What do they look like?”

“Not bad. Rather light-weight, though, and sort of slow. They’re from Arizona or somewhere out that way, I think. You can’t tell them apart, Joe.”

“Think they’re football stuff?”

“Search me. Might be. They’re light, though. Here comes Kewpie. Gosh, he’s fatter than ever! Hi, Kewpie! Come over here!”

It was Proudtree who answered the hail, descended the steps, and approached. “Hello, Joe! Hello, Frank! Well, here we are again, eh? Great to be back, isn’t it? Have a good summer, Joe?”

“Fine! You?”

“Corking! I was on Dad’s yacht all through August. Saw the races and everything. Bully eats, too. You understand.”

“Yes,” Joe Stevenson replied, “and I understand why you’re about twenty pounds overweight, Kewpie! You ought to be kicked around the yard, you fat loafer. Thought you wanted to play center this fall.”

“I’m going to! Listen, Joe, I’m only fourteen pounds over and I’ll drop that in no time. Honest, I will. You see! Besides, it isn’t all fat, either. A lot of it’s good, hard muscle.”

“Yes, it is! I can see you getting muscle lying around on your father’s yacht! I’m off you, Kewpie. You haven’t acted square. You knew mighty well that you were supposed to keep yourself fit this summer, and now look at you! You’re a big fat lump!”

“Aw, say, Joe! Listen, will you?” Proudtree’s gaze wandered in search of inspiration and fell on the twins. His face lighted. “Hello, you chaps!” he said. Then he leaned over and spoke to Joe. “Say, have you met the Turner brothers, Joe? One of ’em’s a swell player. Played out in North Dakota or somewhere.”

“Which one?” asked Joe, surreptitiously eying the twins. “Why, the – I forget: they look so much alike, you know. I think it’s the one this way. Or maybe it’s the other. Anyway, I’ll fetch them over, eh?”

“All right, Kewpie.”

Kewpie started away, paused, and spoke again. “They’re – they’re awfully modest chaps, Joe. You’d think from hearing them talk that they didn’t know much about the game, but don’t you be fooled. That’s just their way. You understand.”

“Oh, sure, Kewpie!” And when the latter had gone on his errand Joe smiled and, lowering his voice, said to Frank Brattle: “Kewpie’s trying to put something over. I wonder what.”

“Proudtree tells me one of you fellows plays football,” said Joe, a minute later, when introductions had been performed and Ned and Laurie had seated themselves. “We need good players this fall. Of course, I hope you’ll both come out.”

“Ned’s the football chap,” said Laurie. “Baseball’s my line.”

“I don’t know – ” began Ned, but Laurie pinched him warningly, and he gulped and, to Kewpie’s evident relief, made a fresh start. “I’m not much of a player,” he said modestly, “but I’m willing to have a try at it.”

Kewpie darted an “I-told-you-so” glance at Joe and Frank.

“Where do you come from, Turner?” Joe asked politely.

“Santa Lucia, California. I was in the high school there two years. Everything’s quite – quite different here.” Ned spoke hurriedly, as though anxious to switch the conversation from football, and Laurie smiled in wicked enjoyment. “The climate’s different, you know,” Ned went on desperately, “and the country and – and everything.”

“I suppose so,” said Frank Brattle. “What’s your position, Turner?”

“Position?”

“Yes; I mean, where did you play? Behind the line, I suppose, or maybe end.”

“Oh, yes, yes, behind the line. You see, I – I – ”

“There aren’t many fellows can play half-back the way Ned can,” said Laurie, gravely. “He won’t tell you so, but if you ever meet any one who saw him play against Weedon School last year – ”

“Shut up!” begged Ned, almost tearfully.

Kewpie was grinning delightedly. Joe Stevenson viewed Ned with absolute affection. “Half-back, eh? Well, we can use another good half, Turner, and I hope you’re the fellow. I don’t know whether Kewpie told you that I’m captain this year, but I am, and I’m going to try mighty hard to captain a winning team. You look a bit light, but I dare say you’re fast, and, for my part, I like them that way. Besides, we’ve got Mason and Boessel if we want the heavy sort. Practice starts to-morrow at four, by the way. How about your brother? Glad to have him come out, too. Even if he hasn’t played, he might learn the trick. And there’s next year to think of, you know.”

“I think not, thanks,” answered Laurie. “One football star is enough in the family.”

“Well, if you change your mind, come on and have a try. Glad to have met you. See you to-morrow – er – Turner. I want to find Dave, Frank. Coming along?”

The two older boys made off toward West Hall, and as soon as they were out of hearing Ned turned indignantly on Laurie.

“You’re a nice one!” he hissed. “Look at the hole you’ve got me in! ‘Half-back’! ‘Played against Weedon School’! What did you want to talk that way for? Why, those fellows think I know football!”

“Cheer up,” answered his brother, grinning. “All you’ve got to do is bluff it through. Besides, Proudtree asked us not to let on we didn’t know a football from a doughnut, and I had to say something! You acted as if you were tongue-tied!”

“Yes; that’s so – you started it!” Ned turned belligerently around. “Said it would be a favor to you – ” He stopped, discovering that Proudtree had silently disappeared and that he was wasting his protests on the empty air. “Huh!” he resumed after a moment of surprise, “it’s a good thing he did beat it! Look here, Laurie, I’m in a beast of a mess. Yow know I can’t face that captain chap to-morrow. Suppose he handed me a football and told me to kick it!”

“He won’t. I’ve watched football practice back home. You’ll stand around in a circle – ”

“How the dickens can I stand in a circle?” objected Ned.

“And pass a football for a while. Then you’ll try starting, and maybe fall on the ball a few times, until you’re nice and lame, and after that you’ll run around the track half a dozen times – ”

“Oh, shut up! You make me sick! I won’t do it. I’m through. I’d look fine, wouldn’t I? I guess not, partner!”

“You’ve got to, Ned,” replied Laurie calmly. “You can’t back down now. The honor of the Turners is at stake! Come on up and I’ll read that rules book to you. Maybe some of it’ll seep in!”

After a moment of indecision Ned arose and followed silently.

CHAPTER V – IN THE PERFORMANCE OF DUTY

School began in earnest the next morning. Ned and Laurie were awakened from a deep slumber by the imperative clanging of a gong. There were hurried trips to the bath-room, and finally a descent to the recreation-room and morning prayers. Breakfast followed in the pleasant, sunlit dining-hall, and at half-past eight the twins went to their first class. There wasn’t much real work performed that morning, however. Books were bought and, being again in possession of funds, Ned purchased lavishly of stationery and supplies. He had a veritable passion for patent binders, scratch-pads, blank-books, and pencils, and Laurie viewed the result of a half-hour’s mad career with unconcealed concern.

“You’re all wrong, Ned,” he said earnestly. “We aren’t opening a stationery emporium. Besides, we can’t begin to compete with the office. They buy at wholesale, and – ”

“Never mind the comedy. You’ll be helping yourself to these things soon enough, and then you won’t be so funny.”

“That’s the only way they’ll ever get used up! Why, you’ve got enough truck there to last three years!”

There was one interesting annual observance that morning that the twins witnessed inadvertently. At a little after eight the fellows began to assemble in front of School Hall. Ned and Laurie, joining the throng, supposed that it was merely awaiting the half-hour, until presently there appeared at the gate a solitary youth of some fourteen years, who came up the circling drive about as joyfully as a French Royalist approaching the guillotine. Deep silence prevailed until the embarrassed and unhappy youth had conquered half of the interminable distance. Then a loud “Hep!” was heard, and the throng broke into a measured refrain:

“Hep! – Hep! – Hep! – Hep!”

This was in time to the boy’s dogged steps. A look of consternation came into his face and he faltered. Then, however, he set his jaw, looked straight ahead, and came on determinedly.

“Hep! – Hep!”

Up the steps he passed, a disk of color in each cheek, looking neither to right nor left, and passed from sight. As he did so, the chorus changed to a good-humored laugh of approval. Ned made inquiry of a youth beside him.

“Day boy,” was the explanation. “There are ten of them, you know: fellows who live in town. We always give them a welcome. That chap had spunk, but you wait and see some of them!”

Two more followed together, and, each upheld in that moment of trial by the presence of the other, passed through the ordeal with flying colors. But the twins noted that the laughing applause was lacking. After that, the remaining seven arrived almost on each other’s heels and the air was filled with “Heps!” Some looked only surprised, others angry; but most of then grinned in a sickly, embarrassed way and went by with hanging heads.

“Sort of tough,” was Ned’s verdict, and Laurie agreed as they followed the last victim inside.

“It looks as if day students weren’t popular,” he added.

Later, though, he found that he was wrong. The boys who lived in the village were accepted without reservation, but, naturally enough, seldom attained to a full degree of intimacy with those who lived in the dormitories.

By afternoon the twins had become well shaken down into the new life, had made several superficial acquaintances, and had begun to feel at home. Of Kewpie Proudtree they had caught but fleeting glimpses, for that youth displayed a tendency to keep at a distance. As the hour of four o’clock approached, Ned became more and more worried, and his normally sunny countenance took on an expression of deep gloom. Laurie kept close at his side, fearing that courage would fail and Ned would bring disgrace to the tribe of Turner. But Laurie ought to have known better, for Ned was never what his fellows would have called a “quitter.” Ned meant to see it through. His mind had retained very little of the football lore that his brother had poured into it the night before, but he had, at least, a somewhat clearer idea of the general principles of the game. He knew, for instance, that a team comprised eleven players instead of the twelve he had supposed, and that certain restrictions governed the methods by which you might wrest the ball from an opponent. Thus, you could not legally snatch it out of his arms, nor trip him up in the hope that he would drop it. Ned thought the restrictions rather silly, but accepted them.

The athletic field, known in school parlance as the play-field, was even larger than it had looked from their windows. It held two gridirons and three baseball diamonds, as well as a quarter-mile track and ten tennis-courts. There was also a picturesque and well-appointed field-house and a fairly large grand stand. To Ned’s relief, most of the ninety students were in attendance, though only about forty of the number were in playing togs. Ned’s idea was that among so many he might escape close observation.

He had, of course, handled a football more or less, and he was possessed of his full share of common sense. Besides, he had perhaps rather more than his share of assurance. To his own surprise, if not to Laurie’s, he got through the hour and a half of practice very creditably. Seasoned candidates and novices were on the same plane to-day. There was, first of all, a talk by the coach. Mr. Mulford was a short, broad, good-humored man of about thirty, with a round and florid countenance, which possibly accounted for the nickname of “Pinky” that the school had affectionately awarded him. His real name was Stephen, and he had played guard, and played it well, for several years with Trinity College. This was his fourth season as football coach at Hillman’s and his third as baseball coach. So far he had been fairly successful in both sports.

His talk was brief and earnest, although he smiled through it all. He wanted lots of material, but he didn’t want any fellow to report for practice who didn’t mean to do his level best and stick it out. Those who were afraid of either hard work or hard knocks had better save their time and his. Those who did report would get a fair trial and no favor. He meant to see the best team this fall that Hillman’s School had ever turned out, one that would start with a rush and finish with a bang, like a rocket!

“And,” he went on, “I want this team made up the way a rocket is. A rocket is filled with stars, fellows, but you don’t realize it until the final burst. So we’re going to put the soft pedal on individual brilliancy this year. It almost had us licked last fall, as you’ll remember. This year we’re going to try hard for a well-rounded team of hard workers, fellows who will interlock and gear together. It’s the machine that wins, the machine of eleven parts that work all together in oil. We’re going to find the eleven parts first, and after that we’re going to do the oiling. All right now! Ten men to a squad. Get balls and pass in circles. Learn to hold the ball when you catch it. Glue right to it. And when you pass, put it where you want it to go. Don’t think that the work is silly and unnecessary, because it isn’t. A fellow who can’t hold a ball when it comes to him is of no use on this team. So keep your minds right on the job and your eyes right on the ball. All right, Captain Stevenson.”

At least, Ned could, to quote Laurie, “stand in a circle” and pass a football, and he did, and did it better than several others in his squad. In the same way, he could go after a trickling pigskin and catch it up without falling over himself, though it is possible that his “form” was less graceful than that of one or two of his fellows. When, later, they were formed in a line and started off by the snapping of the ball in the hands of a world-wearied youth in a faded blue sweater bearing a white H on its breast, Ned didn’t show up so well, for he was almost invariably one of the last to plunge forward. The blue-sweatered youth called his attention to the fact finally in a few well-chosen words.

“You guy in the brown bloomers!” he bellowed. (Of course they weren’t bloomers, but a pair of somewhat expansive golf breeches that Ned, lacking proper attire, had donned, not without misgivings, on Laurie’s advice.) “Are you asleep? Put some life into it! Watch this ball, and when you see it roll, jump! You don’t look like a cripple, but you surely act like one!”

Toward the end a half-dozen last-year fellows took to punting, but, to Ned’s relief, no one suggested that he take a hand at it, and at half-past five or thereabouts his trials came to an end. He went out of his way, dodging behind a group on the side-line, to escape Joe Stevenson, but ran plump into Frank Brattle instead.

“Hello, Turner,” Frank greeted. “How did it go?”

“All right,” replied Ned, with elaborate carelessness. “Fine.”

“Rather a nuisance having to go through the kindergarten stunts, isn’t it?” continued the other, sympathetically. “Mulford’s a great hand at what he calls the fundamentals, though. I dare say he’s right, too. It’s funny how easy it is to get out of the hang of things during the summer. I’m as stiff as a broom!”

“So am I,” answered Ned, earnestly and truthfully. Frank smiled, nodded, and wandered on, and Ned, sighting Laurie hunched up in the grand stand, joined him. “It’s a bully game, football,” he sighed, as he lowered himself cautiously to a seat and listened to hear his muscles creak. “Full of beneficial effects and all that.” Laurie grinned in silence. Ned felt experimentally of his back, frowned, rocked himself backward and forward twice, and looked relieved. “I guess there’s nothing actually broken,” he murmured, “I dare say it’ll be all right soon.”

“They say the first two months are the hardest,” responded Laurie, comfortingly. “After that there’s no sensation.”

Ned nodded. “I believe it,” he said feelingly. He fixed his gaze on the farther goal-post and after a minute of silence remarked:

“I’d like to catch the man who invented football!”

He turned a challenging look on his brother. Laurie blinked and for several seconds his lips moved noiselessly and there was a haunted look in his gray eyes. Then, triumphantly, he completed the couplet: “It may suit some, but it doesn’t suit all!”

“Rotten!” said Ned.

“I’d like to see you do any better,” answered Laurie, aggrievedly. “There isn’t any proper rhyme for ‘football,’ anyway.”

“Nor any reason for it, either. Of all – ”

“Hi, you fellow!” interrupted a scandalized voice. “What are you doing up there? Have you done your two laps?”

The speaker was a lanky, red-haired man who bristled with authority and outrage.

“Two laps?” stammered Ned. “No, sir.”

“Get at it, then. And beat it in when you have. Want to catch cold, do you? Sitting around without a blanket or anything like that!” The trainer shot a final disgusted look at the offender and went on.

“Gee,” murmured Ned, “I thought I was done! Two laps, he said! I’ll never be able to, Laurie!”

“Oh, yes, you will,” was the cheerful response. “And while you’re doing them you can think up a better rhyme for ‘football’ than I did!”

Ned looked back reproachfully as he limped to the ground and, having gained the running-track, set off at a stiff-kneed jog. Laurie’s expression relented as he watched.

“Sort of tough on the kid,” he muttered sympathetically. Then his face hardened again and he shook his head. “I’ve got to be stern with him, though!”

CHAPTER VI – NED IS FIRM

Kewpie Proudtree obeyed the shouted invitation to enter Number 16 and appeared with a countenance as innocent as that of an infant. “Hello, fellows,” he said cordially, dropping into a chair with indications of exhaustion. “How do you like it as far as you’ve gone?”

Ned shifted in his seat at the study-table, choking back a groan, and fixed Kewpie with a baleful look. “Listen, Proudtree,” he said sternly. “I’ve got a bone to pick with you!”

“With me?” Kewpie stared in amazement. “What have I done?”

“You’ve got me into a fix, that’s what you’ve done! Didn’t you ask me – us – last night not to let on to Stevenson that we – I – couldn’t play football? Didn’t you say it would be a favor to you? Didn’t you say it would be all right and – and everything?”

“Sure! What of it?”

“Why, you crazy galoot, you must have told him that I knew all about the game! And you knew mighty well I didn’t! Stevenson thinks I’m a wonder, and I don’t know a touch-down from a – a forward kick!”

“Pass, not kick,” corrected Kewpie, patiently. “Look here, Turner – Say, are you Ned or Laurie? Blessed if I can tell!”

“Ned,” replied that youth, with much dignity.

“Guess I’ll have to call you Ned, then. Can’t call you both Turner. You understand. It was like this, Ned. You see, I want to stand in with Joe Stevenson. It – it’s for the good of the school. If they don’t play me at center this fall, who are they going to play? Well, Joe thought I – well, he seemed to think I hadn’t acted just right about keeping my weight down. He – he was sort of peeved with me. So I wanted to smooth him down a bit. You understand. That’s why I told him what I did.”

“Well, what did you tell him?”

“Why, I sort of – well, it wasn’t what I said exactly; it was what he thought I meant!”

“Proudtree, you’re telling a whopper,” said Ned, sternly. “And you told one to Stevenson, too, or I miss my guess.”

“I only said that you were a swell football-player.”

“For the love of lemons! What do you call that but a whopper?”

Kewpie looked both ashamed and distressed. He swallowed hard and glanced furtively at Laurie as though hoping for aid. But Laurie looked as unsympathetic as Ned. Kewpie sighed dolefully. “I – I suppose it was,” he acknowledged. “I didn’t think about that. I’m sorry, Ned, honest! I didn’t mean to tell what wasn’t so. I just wanted to get Joe’s mind off his troubles. You understand.”

“Well, you got me in a mess,” grumbled Ned. “I got by all right to-day, I suppose, but what’s going to happen to-morrow?”

Kewpie evidently didn’t know, for he stared morosely at the floor for a long minute. Finally, “I’ll go to Joe and fess up if – if you say so,” he gulped.

“I think you ought to,” responded Ned.

“Where’s the sense in that?” demanded Laurie. “What good would it do? Proudtree did fib, but he didn’t mean to. I mean he didn’t do it for harm. If he goes and tells Stevenson that he fibbed, Stevenson will have it in for him harder than ever; and he will have it in for you, too, Ned. Maybe he will think it was a scheme that you and Proudtree hatched together. That’s a punk idea, I say. Best thing to do is prove that Proudtree didn’t fib.”

“How?” asked Ned.

“Why, Proudtree – ”

“There’s an awful lot of that ‘Proudtree’ stuff,” complained the visitor. “Would you mind calling me Kewpie?”

“All right. Well, Kewpie told Captain Stevenson that you are a swell player. Go ahead and be one.”

“Huh, sounds easy the way you say it,” scoffed Ned; “but how can I, when I don’t know anything about the silly game? I wish to goodness you’d taken up football instead of me!”

“You got through to-day all right, didn’t you?” asked Laurie. “Well, keep it up. Keep your eyes open and learn. You can do it. You’re no fool, even if you haven’t my intellect. Besides, you’re the best little fakir that ever came over the range.”

“You can’t fake kicking a football,” said Ned, scathingly.

“Look here!” exclaimed Kewpie, his round face illumined by a great idea. “Tell you what, Ned! I’ll show you how to kick!”

The silence that greeted the offer might have offended a more sensitive youth, but Kewpie went on with enthusiasm. “Of course, I’m no wonder at it. I’m a little too short in the leg and, right now, I – I’m a bit heavy; but I used to kick and I know how it ought to be done. Say we have a half-hour or so at it every morning for a while?”

“Wouldn’t Stevenson know what was up?” asked Ned, dubiously.

“He needn’t know. We’ll go over to the lot behind the grammar school. Even if he saw us, he’d think we were having some fun.”

“He must have a strange idea of fun,” sighed Ned. “Still, if you want to take the trouble – ”

“Glad to! Besides, I owe you something for – for getting you in wrong. And I can put you wise to a lot of little things about handling a ball. We could do some passing, for instance. Wonder who’s got a ball we could borrow. I’ll find one somewhere. You understand. Now, what hour have you got free in the morning?”

A comparison of schedules showed that on two mornings a week the boys could meet at ten, and on two other mornings at ten-thirty. The remaining days were not accommodating, however.

“Well, even four times a week will show results,” said Kewpie, cheerfully. “This is Thursday. We’ll have the first lesson Saturday at ten.”

“I hope they don’t ask me to do any kicking before then,” said Ned.