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Don't you dare talk to me of doing the best you can!" said the coach, shaking a finger under Bi's nose "for all the world," as Bi told me afterwards, "as though he was trying to make me mad!" "'Best you can' be hanged! You've got to do better than you can, a hundred per cent better than you can, ever did, or ever will again! That's what you've got to do!
The other little boys stood round about in speechless envy, or murmured their A B C's and "ba be bi's" along the chapel steps. The lower-form boys were playing leap-frog past the almshouse, and Geoffrey Gosse and the vicar's son were in the public gravel-pit, throwing stones at the robins in the Great House elms across the lane.
I fancy Bi's father had told him that he was coming to college to study, and Bi believed him. Of course, he didn't go to New Haven with us, He didn't have time. I wished afterwards that I hadn't had time myself. Yale trimmed us 23 to 6. The papers threshed it all out again, and all the old grads who weren't too weak to hold pens wrote to the Bulletin and explained where the trouble lay.
"Must be somepin' doin'. Don't know when Bi's been away." "He went up to town this mornin' early," volunteered Dunc Withers. "Reckon he was thirsty. Guess he'll be back on the evenin' train. That's her comin' in now." "Bars all closed in the city," chuckled the chief. "Won't get much comfort there." "You bet Bi knows some place to get it. He won't come home thirsty, that's sure."
Public opinion, like a panther crouching, was forming itself ready to spring, when suddenly a new presence was felt in the room. Three strangers had appeared and somehow quietly gotten into the doorway. Behind them, stretching his neck and unable to be cautious any longer, appeared Bi's slouching form.
Bi pricked up his ears, narrowed his cunning eyes, and slouched over to the paper, looking at the picture keenly: "Read it out, Dunc!" he commanded. "Five thousand dollars reward for information concerning Elizabeth Stanhope!" There followed a description in detail of her size, height, coloring, etc. An inscrutable look overspread Bi's face and hid the cunning in his eyes.
He pushed his way through the crowd about the door, shaking off the fellows' hands, and strode across to where Hecker was standing. Hecker saw him coming, but he only watched calmly. Bi stopped in front of him, that same sort of ugly smile on his face. "We've broken training, sir?" he asked quietly. "Yes," answered the coach. Then Bi's hand swung around and that slap was heard all over the room.
Over went his chair and he was shaking his finger within an inch of Bi's face, his eyes blazing behind his glasses. "Shall I tell you what's the matter with you, Briggs? Shall I tell you why we wouldn't have chosen you if there had been anyone else? Because you're a coward a rank, measly coward, sir!" Bi's face went white and he got up slowly out of his chair.
"You don't 'spose I'm goin' to tell, an' get my frien's in trouble?" "Le's see yer paper, Bi," said Dunc, snatching at it as Bi passed to his regular seat. Bi surrendered his paper with the air of one granting a high favor and sank to his chair and his pipe. "How's crops in the city?" asked Hank Fielder, and Bi's tale was set a-going. Bi could talk; that was one thing that always made him welcome.
When there was still ten minutes of play the whistle blew, and Jordan, white, groggy, and weepy about the eyes, was dragged off the field. Bi had sure used him rough, but I'm not pretending Jordan hadn't come back at him. Bi's face was something fierce. The blood had dried in flakes under his nose, one eye was out of commission, and his lip was bleeding where his tooth had gone through it.
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