the window-seat and hugging one knee
“Yes, indeed, a wonderful pastime,” ruminated Amy, seating himself on
the window-seat and hugging one knee. “All a fellow has to do is to go
out and work like a dray-horse and a pile-driver and street-roller for a
couple of hours every afternoon, get kicked in the shins and biffed in
the eye and rolled in the dirt and ragged by one coach, one captain and
one quarter-back. That’s all he has to do except learn a lot of signals
so he can recognise them in the fraction of a second, be able to recite
the rules frontward and backward and both ways from the middle and live
on indigestible things like beef and rice and prunes. For that he gets
called a ‘mutt’ and a ‘dub’ and a ‘disgrace to the School’ and, unless
he’s lucky enough to break a leg and get out of it before the big game,
he has twenty-fours hours of heart-disease and sixty minutes of glory.
And his picture in the paper. He knows it’s his picture because there’s
a statement underneath that Bill Jones is the third criminal from the
left in the back row. And it isn’t the photographer’s fault if the
good-looking half-back in the second row moved his head just as the
camera went _snap_ and all that shows of Bill Jones is a torn and
lacerated left ear!”