Jack Winters Gridiron Chums | Page 8

not, Bob," the other admitted with genuine regret, because he felt just as sorry as could be for the poor chap. "I suppose you'll sleep mighty little tonight, for worrying over this thing. Try your level best to follow out all you did when in the post-office. Some little thing may recall to your mind that you certainly did drop that particular letter in the slot."
"I will, Jack, surely I will," Bob told him, vigorously; "but I'm afraid it won't do much good. You see, I've become so mixed up by now, thinking one thing and then another, that no matter what did happen I couldn't honestly say I remembered it. But I still have a little hope you'll hear good news from Mr. Dickerson; or that in the morning it may be handed in at our house, for my dad put his full address on the back flap, I remember that very distinctly. Yes, I'd be willing to stand my gruelling and not whimper if only it turned up."
He walked away looking quite down-hearted, Jack saw. Really he felt very sorry for Big Bob Jeffries. The latter was well liked, having a genial disposition, like nearly all big boys do, the smaller runts being the scrappy ones as a rule, as every one knows who has observed the lads in their play hours, and made any sort of a study of their characteristics.
On another occasion Jack well remembered he had come very nearly losing one of the best players on the baseball nine, when the pitcher, Alec Donohue, appeared exceedingly gloomy, and confessed to Jack that as his father was unable to obtain work in the Chester mills and shops, and had been offered a position over in Harmony, he feared that he would thus become ineligible to pitch for Chester.
But Jack, as so often happened when trouble beset him, took the bull by the horns. He went and saw a gentleman who could give Mr. Donohue employment, and enlisted his sympathy. It had all ended right, by a place being found for the man who was out of work; and so Alec pitched the great game whereby Harmony's famous team went down to a crushing defeat.
Jack could not but take note of the similar conditions by which Chester was to be threatened with the loss of one of the strongest members of her team.
"Looks as though history liked to repeat itself," Jack mused, as he walked back home after parting company with Big Bob; "only in this case it's the football eleven that's liable to be weakened if Bob's father takes him out; and we never could scare up a fullback equal to him if we raked old Chester with a fine-tooth comb. So I certainly hope it'll all come out right yet, I surely do!"

CHAPTER IV
A FRIEND IN NEED

It lacked only five minutes or so of the school hour on the following morning when Jack Winters, hurrying along, was intercepted by a disturbed looking boy, who had been impatiently awaiting his arrival.
Of course this was none other than Big Bob Jeffries, who had kept aloof from all his customary associates ever since arriving, and had never once taken his eyes off the street along which he knew Jack must come.
He seized hold of the other eagerly. Jack needed no second look to convince him that poor Bob had passed a wretched night. His eyes were red, and there was an expression of mute misery on his usually merry face, that doubtless had induced more than one fellow to ask if he felt ill. No doubt Bob had a stereotyped answer to this sympathetic question, which was to the effect that he was "not feeling himself."
"Oh! I thought you'd never come along, Jack!" he exclaimed, in a voice that quivered with eagerness and anxiety; "though of course I understood that you must be waiting for Mr. Dickerson to be free to talk with you. Tell me what you did, please, Jack?"
"I'm sorry to say I couldn't learn much at the post-office," the other hastened to say, determined not to keep Bob in suspense any longer than could be helped.
"But you did ask about the foreign letters, didn't you, Jack?"
"Yes, I worked that part of it pretty well, and managed to get into a talk about the great difficulty which most foreigners here in this country found in communicating with their old folks abroad. Mr. Dickerson said there was a time when every day he had quite a batch of letters going out to different countries; because you know there are many foreign workers in our mills here, and they were constantly sending money home to their poor folks. But as the war went on, he said, they began to write less and less, because they feared the letters