However, little Skeet Wigglesworth, beholding him
as he donned the weird regalia of loud sweater, odd basket-ball stockings,
tennis trousers, baseball shoes, and so on, misconstrued his plan, and
believed Hicks intended to torment the squad. Hence, he hurried out,
so that when Hicks appeared in the offing, the football squad and the
spectators in the stands had jeered the happy-go-lucky Junior, and had
good-natured sport at his expense.
T. Haviland Hicks, Jr., after Jack Merritt had drop-kicked a forty-yard
goal, made the excessively rash statement that it was easy. Captain Butch
Brewster had indignantly challenged the heedless youth to show him, and
the results of Hicks' effort to propel the pigskin over the crossbar were
hilarious, for he missed the oval by a foot, nearly dislocated his knee,
and, slipping in the mud, he sat down violently with a thud. However, so
the excited Theophilus now narrated, even as the convulsed students jeered
Hicks, hurling whistles, shouts, cat-calls, songs and humorous remarks at
the downfallen kicker, one of Hicks' celebrated inspirations had smitten
the pestersome Junior, evidently jarred loose by his crashing to terra
firma.
"Hicks figured this way, Butch," explained little Theophilus Opperdyke,
eloquent in his comrade's behalf, "nature had built him like a mosquito,
and endowed him with enough power to lift a pillow; hence he could never
hope to play football on the 'Varsity; but he knew that many games are
won by drop-kicks and by fellows especially trained and coached for that
purpose, and they don't need weight and strength, but they must have the
art, that peculiar knack which few possess.
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