Full-Back Foster
Ralph Barbour
Full-Back Foster
CHAPTER I
MYRON ARRIVES
His name was Myron Warrenton Foster, and he came from Port Foster, Delaware. In age he was seventeen, but he looked more. He was large for his years, but, since he was well proportioned, the fact was not immediately apparent. What did strike you at once were good looks, good health and an air of well-being. The pleasing impression made by the boy’s features was, however, somewhat marred by an expression of self-satisfaction, and it may be that the straight, well-knit figure carried itself with an air of surety that was almost complacent. So, at least, thought one who witnessed Myron’s descent from the New York train that September afternoon.
“There’s a promising-looking chap,” said Jud Mellen, “but he somehow gives you the impression that he’s bought Warne and has come down to look the town over.”
Harry Cater laughed as he picked his trunk check from a handful of coins. “Lots of ’em look that way when they first arrive, Jud. I’m not sure you didn’t yourself,” he added slyly.
“If I did, I soon got over it.” The football captain smiled drily, his gaze following the subject of their remarks. “Just as I suspected,” he continued. “It’s a taxi for his. Four blocks is too far for the poor frail lad.”
“Oh, come, Jud, be fair. Maybe he doesn’t know whether the school’s four blocks or forty. Besides, he’s much too beautifully got up to tramp it. He might get dust on that corking suit of his.”
“It is rather a good-looking outfit, and that’s a fact. Maybe if I was dolled up like that I’d want to ride, too. Well, come on, Katie, and let’s get up there. Practice is at three, and you’ve got only about forty minutes to find yourself in.”
Harry Cater, or “Katie,” as he was known at Parkinson School, had been more charitable than correct in assuming that the new boy was uncertain of the distance between station and school, for the catalogue had definitely said four blocks. But had the distance been two short blocks instead of four long ones it is unlikely that Myron Foster would have walked. Not that he had anything against walking; he recognised it as a healthful and beneficial form of exercise, as well as a pleasant occupation under some circumstances; but he was used to patronising automobiles when it was necessary to get from one place to another. At home there were two cars usually at his service, and when he was away from home a taxi-cab served as well. He couldn’t remember when walking had been a necessity, for prior to the autos there had been carriages, and before the carriages – which had included a pony-cart for his especial use – there had been an English perambulator with easy springs and shining varnished leather top; and beyond that his memory didn’t go.
The vehicle that Myron found himself in brought a smile of amused disdain to his face. It was cheap and small and none too clean, and it made more noise as it whisked over the cobbles than a boiler works. However, when it crossed Adams Street and reached the asphalt it quieted down considerably and its occupant was able to obtain a rather more distinct impression of the little town that was to have the honour of being his place of residence for the ensuing nine months. He rather liked what he could see of it, especially when, having bumped across the trolley tracks on Main Street, he found himself in what was evidently the residential part of Warne. The shops had given way to neat, sometimes rather showy, dwellings on his right, set behind picket fences or lilac hedges, the latter looking sere and frowsy after a hot summer. On his left was a quaint, century-old burying ground in which mossy slate slabs leaned precariously under the cool, deep shadows of giant elms and maples. The church beyond, with its unlovely square steeple, peered through the trees in friendly fashion at the newcomer. At the next intersection the boy caught a glimpse of the inscription “Washington Ave.”