Page:The fighting scrub, (IA fightingscrub00barb).pdf/68

 *mayed to find himself puffing. It was evident to him that his system of summer training had not been a success. Looking back, he realized that he had spent more time on the hotel porch or lolling on the sand than he had meant to!

Mr. Hilliard was called "Pinky" because his hair was coppery-brown. It didn't approach red, but since no other faculty member presented a better claim to the nickname it was awarded to Mr. Hilliard. He was about thirty years old, Clif concluded. He was fairly tall and thin, with a peculiar quick manner of moving his head; sort of jerky, as Clif phrased it to himself; like a hen's!

Practice ended with a single lap around the inner border of the running track. It nearly finished Clif, and he ended the circuit at a slow walk. Tom poked fun at him as they returned to the gymnasium, and Clif was much too short of breath to make any defense. So ended the first day.

The second wasn't much different. There was more long passing and they practiced starts, but getting acquainted with the ball was the principal desideratum, just as yesterday. Both Clif and Tom slightly resented being treated as members of the kindergarten class, although acknowledging that it probably wouldn't do them any harm. Mr. Otis, who had the first squad in charge, found time to look over the others occasionally, and at such times Mr. Hilliard's pupils sought pathetically hard to attract the coach's favorable notice. Or most of them did. Tom, for some reason not quite