athletics!" "Fast on the feet and slow in the head," he grinned. "Well, I'll die trying. But you've got to stand by, Skipper." "Of course. I'll do your Latin and English and part of your Spanish." "Gee, you're a brick." "It's nothing." She dismissed it briefly. "It's my way of doing something, Jimsy, that's all. It's the only way I can be on the team." She glowed pinkly at the thought. "When I sit up on the bleachers and see you make a touchdown and hear 'em yell—why I'm there! I'm on the team because I've helped a little to keep you on the team! It almost makes up[Pg 20] for having to be a girl. Just for the moment, I'm not sitting up high, clean and starched and safe; I'm on the field, hot and muddy and with my nose bleeding, doing something for L. A.! I'm there!" [Pg 20] Jimsy slapped her on the shoulder like a man and brother. "You're there all the time, Skipper! You're there a million!" He made the first team the first day he went out to practice. There was no denying him. He captained the team the second year and every year until he graduated, a year late for all his friend's unwearying toil. As a matter of fact they did not make a special effort to get him through on time; the team needed him, the squad needed him, L. A. needed him. It was more like a college than a High School in those days, with its numbers and its spirit, that strong, intangible evidence of things not seen. There was something about it, a concentrated essence of Jimsy King and hundreds of lesser Jimsy Kings, which made it practically unconquerable. In the year before his final one the team reached its shining perfection and held it to the end. It is still a name to conjure with at the school on the hill, Jimsy King's. The old teachers remember; the word comes down. "A regular old-time L. A. team—the fighting spirit. Like the days of Jimsy King!" [Pg 21] [Pg 21] Other teams might score on them; frequently they could not, but when they did the rooting section was not dashed. It lifted up its multiple voice, young, insolent, unafraid, in mocking song, and Honor Carmody, just on the edge of the section, beside her stepfather, sang with them: It rolled out over the football field and echoed away in the soft Southern California air. It was gay,
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