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Fosgill kept saying "Poor little Patsy! Poor little kid!" half aloud and walking around in circles. He wanted to go to the hospital with him, but we told him he could do no good, and we each still had two puts. After a while we got our nerve back after a fashion, and went on, but, thunder! not one of us was worth a hang. I did thirty-six and thirty-seven, eleven, and won third place at that.
But the evening of the Handicaps we took him back to the boarding house with us, and he sat beside Fosgill and ate ravenously of everything placed before him. We learned Patsy's life story that evening. He went to school generally. He lived with Brian. Brian was his brother, eighteen years old, and a man of business; Brian drove for Connors, the teamster.
Fosgill, who was scratch man that year, had just done an even forty feet and the shot had trickled away toward the cinder path. Whereupon a small bit of humanity appeared from somewhere, picked up the sixteen pounds of lead with much difficulty, and staggered back to the circle with it. "Hello, kid," said Fosgill; "that's pretty heavy for you, isn't it?"
To be sure, he speedily began calling Fosgill "Bull," but I don't think he meant the slightest disrespect; everyone called the big fellow "Bull," and it is quite possible that Patsy believed it to be a title of honor. He was attentive to all of us, but his heart was Fosgill's.
"Bull," he whispered, "do you think I had a mother like other kids?" "I know you did, Patsy." "That's good," sighed the kid happily. "I guess may be I'll see her where I'm goin'." "You saved my life, Patsy," muttered Fosgill, "and there isn't a thing I can do for you. I wish oh, it's a shame, kid!" "Huh! I'm glad Bull. I'd 'a' done most anything for you, Bull.
We had finished one round when the accident occurred. Tanner was in the circle. Fosgill was down near the end of the tape and Patsy was close behind him. Tanner hopped across the circle, overstepped fouling the put and sent the shot away at a tangent. Fosgill had turned his head to speak to the measurer and never saw his danger. Tanner let out a shout of warning, and others echoed it.
Neither Fosgill nor Tanner equaled his first records and the event went to Bull at the ridiculous figures of forty-one, ten and a half. We got the meet by four and a half points. It was almost six o'clock by that time, and Fosgill and I and three others piled into Alien's auto and raced up to the hospital. They had just taken Patsy off the operating table and put him to bed.
And in the successful two years of teaching since then Curly has come to feel that Harris was quite right. He made his first appearance one afternoon a week or so before the Fall Handicap Meeting. Mosher, Fosgill, Alien, Ronimus, and several more of us were down at the end of the field putting the shot.
We had a good man in Fosgill at the shot put, but that's about all. Along in May we had it doped out that if we could get first in the shot put we could win out by a point or two. But there wasn't anything certain about it, for our opponent was strong on second, near-"second," and third-place men. Patsy appeared with the first warm day, looking thinner and littler and older than ever.
Isn't it so, fellows?" We nodded vehemently, and Patsy closed his eyes with a smile of ineffable content on his little face. Presently the eyes flickered open again. "Anyhow," he said quite strongly and with an approach to his old air of self-importance, "anyhow I guess I won for Harvard to-day. Huh?" "Yes, you did, Patsy," answered Fosgill. "We've got you to thank for it, dear little kid."
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