"
"That's all right. I'm not afraid. Fire ahead! What's he going to do
with me?"
"He thinks--he says--he feels it is best--"
"Oh, come on, come on--out with it!"
"He has forbidden you to take any part in the school athletics this
spring," was the reluctant whisper.
Van did not speak.
"I'm mighty sorry, old fellow," declared Bob, "but it was the best
I could do."
Still Van made no reply.
With troubled gaze Bob regarded his chum.
"I'd far rather Maitland had knocked me out," he ventured at last.
Stooping, he put his hand on Van's shoulder.
Van roused himself and looked up into his friend's face with one of
his quick smiles.
"It's all right, Bob," he said. "Don't you fuss about me any more.
You were a trump to get me off as well as you did. I'll take my
medicine without whimpering. I ought to bless my stars that my
banishment from athletics is only temporary. Suppose I had been
smashed up so I could never play another game like that little kid,
Tim McGrew," he shuddered. "It was just sheer luck that saved me.
Why, do you suppose, he should have been the one to be crippled and
I go scot free?" he observed meditatively.
"I don't know. Maybe because there is something in the world that
only you can do. My father believes that."
"Do you?"
"I don't know."
"It would be strange, wouldn't it, to feel you were let off just to
do something?" mused Van. "You'd be wondering all the time what it
was. Of course it would be something big.
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