Page:Stanwood Pier--Crashaw brothers.djvu/51

Rh ant. “I guess he can do things; I guess he can do just about anything he wants to,” Edward thought one day as he sat in chapel and  looked across the aisle at Durant’s resolute,  fine profile and handsome head.

He was destined, he knew, to find out how well Durant could play football, and he did not relish that prospect. It was not so much that he shrank from a test which would demonstrate his own inferiority as that he dreaded the encounter with Durant’s sharp  tongue; he felt sure that in the heat of the  contest his opponent would become ugly. He expected to have jeering, sneering things said  to him all through the game; to be called,  “Pishaw,” a nickname which he hated; to  hear slurring remarks about his St. John’s  affiliations, about his brother.

But his apprehensions proved groundless. Durant disdained stooping to such methods to gall and irritate an opponent; he might say ugly things in a flare-up of temper, but not by premeditation; he played the game as a gentleman. Although he took a keen satisfac-