w, all of
them, but it wasn't brilliant football; it couldn't be. It would be a
battle of dogged endurance.

"I say, my dear, is _that_ a down?" the English novelist wanted to know.

"Yes," said Honor, patiently. "That's a down, and now there'll be
another because they have----" again she cut short her explanation and
caught hold of her stepfather's arm. "Stepper! Look! _Gridley isn't
playing!_"

He stared. "Really, Top Step? Why, they surely----"

"I tell you he isn't playing. See,--there he is, on the side-lines, in
the purple sweater!"

"Well, so much the better for L. A.," said Carter, easily.

Honor shook her head. "I don't understand it." She began, oddly, to feel
herself enveloped in a fog of depression, of foreboding. Again and again
her eyes left the play to rest unhappily on the silent figure in the
purple sweater. Jimsy was playing well; every man on the team was
playing well; but they were not gaining. Jimsy King, on whose heels were
always the wings of Mercury, could not get up speed in that mud,--a
brief flash, no more. She began to bargain with the gods of the
gridiron; at first she had been concerned with scoring in the first five
minutes of play; then she had remodeled her petition ... to score in the
first half. Now, her throat dry, she was aching with the fear of being
scored upon ... counting the minutes yet to play, speeding them in her
heart. It was raining hard again. The rooting section, in spite of the
frantic effort of the hoarse yell leaders, was slowing down. What was
it?--The rain? The mud? Was Jimsy not himself, not the King Gink? Was
his heart with his father in the darkened room in the old King house?

"Of course, I'm not up on this at all, but I'm rather afraid your young
friends are getting the worst of it, my dear!" said Miss Bruce-Drummond,
cheerily.

"It's the longest first half I ever saw in my life," said Honor, between
clenched teeth.

"Ah, yes,--I daresay it does seem so to you, but I expect they keep the
time very carefully, don't you?" She looked the girl over interestedly.
"The psychology of this sort of thing is ver-r-ry entertaining," she
said to Stephen Lorimer.

"Less than five minutes, T. S.," said her stepfather, comfortingly.

"You know, I'm afraid you'll think me fearfully dull," said the
Englishwoman, conversationally, "but I'm still not quite clear about a
'down.' _Would_ you mind telling me the next time they do one?--Just
when it begins, and when it e