Events passed at an amazing speed for the next few days. Clint moved at
times in a waking dream, and Amy, tapping his head significantly, spoke
to him soothingly and hoped that the trouble would not prove permanent.
Clint had a way of suddenly waking, at the most inopportune moments, to
the fact that he was due to play left tackle on the Brimfield Football
Team against Claflin School in a few days, and when he did he
invariably experienced an appalling sick feeling at the pit of his
stomach and became for the moment incapable of speech or action. When
this occurred in class during, say, a faltering elucidation of the
Iliad, it produced anything but a favourable impression on the
instructor. Fortunately, while actually engaged in out-guessing Lee, of
the second, or breaking through the none too vulnerable Pryme, or racing
down the field under one of Harris’s punts, he had no time to think of
it and so was spared the mortification of suspended animation at what
would have been a most unfortunate time. His appetite became decidedly
capricious. And the capriciousness increased as Saturday drew near.
Also, the sinking sensations to which he had become a prey attacked him
more often. He drove Amy to despair by predicting all sorts of direful
things. He was sure that he wouldn’t be able to do anything with
Terrill, the Claflin right end. He was morally certain that he was going
to disgrace himself and the school. He was even inclined to think,
rather hopefully, as it seemed to Amy, that he would be taken violently
ill before Saturday.