CHAPTER VII
Trompet Shrugg
The recognition appeared to be mutual. As the teacher's cold glance met Garry's questioning one the eyes of the former hardened with a gleam of antagonism.
The interchange lasted only a second, but it was long enough to assure Garry that it would be a difficult task to erase from the mind of Trompet Shrugg, teacher of English, the memory of that muddy football and the indignity to which the incident had subjected him.
"I'm in Dutch, all right," the boy thought ruefully, as he took a seat between Nick Danter and Bill Sherwood. "That old boy looked as though he could hold a grudge forever. Just my luck that I have to be under him during my first term in Lenox High!"
Garry glanced at Nick and noticed that he, too, was eyeing the teacher with interest. Evidently Nick remembered that fateful day in the lot and was connecting the instructor with the tall, stiff man who had been on his way to "Mr. Elliny's house."
Catching Garry's glance, Nick winked dolefully, while his lips framed the words: "Tough luck."
Garry nodded and would have telegraphed an answer, had not a peculiar expression in the eyes of his chum warned him to watch the teacher.
Glancing toward the desk, Garry found the eyes of Trompet Shrugg fixed upon him in a disapproving stare. Garry met the stare steadily though respectfully, and in a moment the English teacher turned away to speak to one of the other boys.
"All set to pick on me," said Garry to himself resentfully. "He seems to think I kicked the pigskin at him on purpose. It begins to look as though I'd have to watch my step while I'm in this class, anyway."
The English period dragged interminably, with Professor Shrugg addressing the boys in his painfully precise English, outlining the course for the term, and declaring in no uncertain manner what would be expected of the boys in his classes.
There was a sigh of genuine relief when the bell sounded through the hall announcing the end of that period and the commencement of the next.
When finally the work of the day was over and the boys were strapping their new books together, his chums expressed their solicitude over the outlook for Garry.
"Gee, Garry, that sure is hard luck about old Shrugg," condoled Ted Dillingham.
"It is, for a fact," agreed Garry. "That old boy has it in for me, all right. I could tell it by the way he looked at me."
"I see where you'll have to be a model for all the rest of us roughnecks," grinned Nick. "You will have to be so very, very good that Shrugg will stop suspecting you of secret plots against his health and happiness."
"And shirt front," added Rooster. "I guess from the look of him, we'll all have to walk as though we were treading on eggs. That guy has an eye like a snake's."
"I bet he'll be about as popular as one, too," predicted Bill.
The prophecy proved to be not far from the truth. Trompet Shrugg was a scholar, a highly educated man. But to his students he was stern, abrupt, sometimes insultingly sarcastic.
A large part of this sarcasm was directed at Garry in the days that followed. But the more Shrugg picked on him, the greater was Garry's popularity among his schoolmates. Nick and Rooster had been careful to circulate the story of the muddy football and the martinet of a teacher. This delighted the boys and made Garry into something of a hero, while much secret fun was poked at the stiff, pedantic Trompet Shrugg.
Garry, however, found nothing amusing in the dislike the teacher of English had for him. He was subjected almost daily to numerous small slights and subtle bits of sarcasm, which he found it difficult to laugh off. He knew himself constantly watched, and his very eagerness to make no mistakes sometimes tripped him up.
Garry had his worries outside the classroom as well as in. After the run-in between him and Sandy Podder the latter's enmity against the former captain of the Hill Street eleven grew, if possible, still more active.
Podder and his cronies lost no opportunity to annoy and exasperate the lad. Sly winks and sneering glances passed between them when Garry was present, though their respect for his courage and strength prevented them from deliberately provoking him to hostilities.
Strangely enough, Lent Stewart, the constant companion of Sandy during those first days at school, seemed to share the latter's enmity for Garry.
"Though the only thing you ever did to that chump was to save his life," Ted said one day when they had chanced to overhear an insulting remark of Lent Stewart's directed covertly at Garry. "That's a fine thing to hold a grudge about."
Things were very much in the same state when about a week later Garry and his friends entered the hall of the school to find an excited crowd about the bulletin board.
"Something's up!" cried Garry. "Let's have a look!"
As he and his friends pushed forward, some of those nearest stepped back so that the newcomers could have a good look at the board.
At the same moment that Garry recognized Sandy Podder and Lent Stewart in the crowd he came face to face with quite another type of boy, Pete Maddern, the former captain of the Cherry Street football team.
"Hello, Grayson!" Pete greeted Garry in a hearty voice. "Here's good news. First call for the gridiron."
Garry's heart leaped and enthusiasm showed in his tone as he answered his "friendly enemy" in the same spirit.
"Something doing at last, is there?" he said. "Suppose you're going to try for the team?"
"Am I? You bet!"
"And it's a team worth trying for, I tell you," came another voice.
Garry turned to see Tom Allison at his elbow.
Many who had witnessed the redhot games between the three grammar schools during the previous season watched the reunion of the trio with interest.
It was evident from their faces that these boys who had been deadly enemies on the gridiron, striving against each other with all that was in them, were the best of friends now that they were off the field, each admiring the good qualities of the others.
The worth-while boys in the group about the bulletin board that day recognized good sportsmanship when they saw it, and the popularity of the three, already marked, grew in consequence.
"Lenox has always stood well," Garry said, in answer to Tom's observation. "It's up to the boys this year to get the championship back again."
Garry referred to the fact that the year before Lenox High had lost the championship in the league of six high schools which for the two years preceding that it had held against all comers. Naturally, all Lenoxites were eager to wipe out the loss of the year before by a smashing victory during the present season. So at Garry's words there was an eager murmur of assent from the boys and cries of:
"That's the stuff!"
"Lenox forever!"
"We'll rip the league wide open this fall!"
Then from the outside of the crowd came Sandy Podder's sneering voice:
"Sounds fine. Grayson's got it all mapped out. Now that he's here, Lenox is all right."
An angry murmur arose, and Pete Maddern swung on his heel and regarded the speaker coldly.
"Say, you'd better sing small, Sandy Podder," he said. "What have you ever done for football, I'd like to know? When you've captained a champion team like Grayson here you can begin to talk."
There was a laugh at Sandy's expense. As Garry walked off with Tom Allison, Pete Maddern and his other and older friends, eagerly discussing the prospects of the team, Podder turned with a scowl to Lent Stewart.
"Let's get out of here," he growled. "That Garry Grayson's got a worse swelled head than ever. He makes me sick. The whole bunch of 'em make me sick. I don't see why they want to let freshmen on the team, anyhow. Colleges don't do it."
"Don't worry," replied his companion. "Wait till Grayson tries to make the team—Allison and Maddern too, for that matter. They'll find they're up against a mighty tough undertaking. Kicking the pigskin on a high school gridiron is a different thing entirely from grammar school games. When they find that they can't make the team, maybe they'll be the ones to sing small."
"Let's hope they will," muttered Sandy, and grinned maliciously at the thought.
Meanwhile Garry and his friends had forgotten Sandy's outburst and his consequent discomfiture in their excitement over the call for gridiron recruits.
Would they answer the call? Would a bee buzz?
"See you this afternoon in the gym," Garry said, as Tom and Pete parted from him in the hall.
"Gee, how are we going to stick it out till two-thirty?" exclaimed Ted Dillingham.
"Anyway, we'll soon know the worst," remarked Nick.
"Or the best," added Rooster, a little more optimistically.
It looked at one time in the afternoon as though Garry would have to "stick it out" a good deal longer than two-thirty. The trouble was in Mr. Shrugg's class, as usual. Following his policy of hectoring Garry, the teacher called him to book on the charge that he was skylarking with the boys back of him, thus wasting the time that should have been spent in writing a short essay.
Possibly the teacher was honest enough in this case. He was nearsighted, and may have failed to see that the trouble was with the two boys seated directly behind Garry, who, in fact, was attending strictly to business.
If, however, it was persecution that prompted the teacher's action, it failed of its object, for the two boys at fault at once shouldered the blame and declared that Garry had taken no part in the disturbance. Still Shrugg appeared to be, or really was, unconvinced. He was one of the small minds that hate to confess to a mistake.
"In that event," he said in his dry voice, "perhaps Grayson will read to us the result of his concentrated effort. Come out to the front of the room, if you please, so that we may hear you better."
As Garry, red and wrathful, made his way to the front of the room he saw the eyes of his friends fixed upon him sympathetically. If Shrugg should think the composition not up to the mark—and he would seize upon the slightest pretext for thinking so—then Garry would probably be kept after school to write another and could not attend the meeting of football candidates.
No wonder the eyes of his chums followed him fearfully. No wonder, either, that Garry's lips were set as he came to the front of the room and met the satirical glance of the teacher.
"Now read, if you please," directed the latter.
Garry detected a gleam of pleasant anticipation in the fishy eyes fixed upon him, and his resentment against the narrow-minded man grew hotter.
It happened fortunately that the topic given out by Mr. Shrugg for the essay was one that especially appealed to Garry. Always good in English, with an ability to express his thoughts clearly and concisely, the composition Garry read to the class that day under the supercilious stare of the teacher was an example of the boy's best work.
Even the boys were interested, and when Garry finished and looked at the teacher there was an involuntary murmur of applause.
There was the proof that Garry was not guilty of the fault of which he had been accused. He could not have written so much in so short a time and with such evident concentration on his subject if he had been involved in the mischief-making imputed to him.
Mr. Shrugg's comment was curt.
"That will do, Grayson. You can return to your seat."
Not a word of appreciation of the really excellent work! Not a generous admission that he had been wrong!
Garry returned to his seat, glad that he had vindicated himself, but more resentful than ever of the small-minded ways of his instructor.
"Gee, Garry, that was a close call!" remarked Nick Danter at the end of the period when the boys were in the hall passing from one classroom to another.
"Thought you were a goner that time for sure," put in Rooster.
"But say, wasn't Shrugg sore? And wasn't that a classy spiel that Garry gave us in his essay?" exclaimed Bill Sherwood, giving Garry a thump between the shoulders. "I begin to think this young feller's wasting his time on football. Ought to be an orator."
Garry grinned cheerfully. His anger against Trompet Shrugg was beginning to evaporate and he was beginning to appreciate more his lucky escape from the pedantic tyrant.
"Wouldn't be half so much fun," he said in response to Bill.