Page:The purple pennant (IA purplepennant00barb).pdf/158

Rh selves out as extensively as the ever-watchful "Skeet" would allow. Fudge Shaw, looking heroic—and slightly rotund—in a brand-new white shirt, trunks and spiked shoes, was taking his turn with the shot. So far only three other youths had chosen to contest with him for the mastery in this event, but unfortunately for Fudge two of the three were older fellows with experience and brawn. One, Harry Partridge, a senior and a tackle on the football team, was in command of the shot-putters. Partridge was a good sort usually, Fudge considered, but to-day he was certainly impatient and censorious, not to mention sarcastic!

"Look here, Fudge," he asked after the tyro had let the shot roll off the side of his hand and dribble away for a scant twelve feet in a direction perilously close to a passing broad-jumper, "who ever told you you could put the shot, anyway? You don't know the first thing about it! Now come back here and let me tell you for the fiftieth time that the shot leaves your hand over the tips of your fingers and doesn't roll off the side. I'm not saying anything just now about your spring or your shoulder work. All I'm trying to do is to get it into that ivory knob of yours that the shot rests here and that it leaves your hand so! Now cut out all the movements and let me see you hold it right and get it away right.