Play the Game! | Page 8

were still leaping and shuddering,
with its secular second verse--
My-sister-Mary-walks-like-THIS!

"Well, Top Step," said Stephen one of those evenings, "eleven boys
beside the stand-by Jimsy. Fair to middling popularity, I should say!"
"Popularity?" She opened her candid eyes wide at him. "Why, Stepper,
you know it's not that! They don't come to see me! They don't mind me,
of course, but it's the eats, and meeting each other,--and mostly Jimsy, I
guess! Mercy,--the chocolate's boiling over!"
She clearly believed it, and it was more or less true. The Carmody
home of a Sunday night was a sort of glorified club house without rules
or dues or by-laws. It was the thing to do, if one were so lucky. It rather
placed a boy in the scheme of things to be one of "the Sunday-night
bunch." Jimsy was the Committee on Membership.
"Let's have that Burke boy out to supper Sunday, shan't we?" Honor
would say. "He's doing so well on the team."
"No," Jimsy would answer, definitely. "Not at the house, Skipper."
Honor accepted his judgments unquestioningly. Some way, with the
deep wisdom of boys, he knew, better than she could, that the young
Burke person was better on the field than in the drawing-room. There
was nothing snobbish in their gatherings; shabby boys came, girls who
had made their own little dimity dresses. It was the intangible,
inexorable caste of the best boyhood, and Honor knew, comfortably,
that her particular King could do no wrong.
The rooting section had a special yell for Jimsy, when he had sped
down the field to a touchdown or kicked a difficult goal. It followed the
regular High School yell, hair-lifting in its fierceness:
King! King! King! K-I-N-G, King! G-I-N-K, Gink! He's the King Gink!
He's the King Gink! He's the King Gink! K-I-N-G, King! KING!
and Honor utterly agreed with them.
CHAPTER III
The house across the street from the Carmody place was suddenly sold.

People were curious and a little anxious. Every one on that block had
been there for a generation or so; there was a sense of permanence
about them all--even the Kings.
"Eastern people," said Mrs. Lorimer. "A mother, rather delicate-looking,
and one son, eighteen or nineteen I should say. He's frail-looking, too,
and he limps a little. I imagine they're very nice. Everything about
them"--her magazine reading had taken her quite reasonably to a front
window the day the newcomers' furniture was uncrated and carried
in--"seems very nice." She hoped, if it developed that they really were
desirable that they would be permanent. Los Angeles was coming to
have such a floating population....
Honor and Jimsy observed the boy from across the street, a slim,
modish person. "Gee," said Jimsy, "it must be fierce to be lame!--to
have your body not--not do what you tell it to! I wonder what he does?
He can't do anything, can he?" His eyes were deep with honest pity.
"Oh, I suppose he sort of fills in with other things," Honor conceded. "I
expect, if people can't do the things that count most, they go in for other
things. He seems awfully keen about his two cars."
"They're peaches, both of 'em," said Jimsy without envy.
"And of course he has time to be a wonder at school, if he wants to be."
"Yep. Looks as if he might be a shark at it." He grinned. "Slow on his
feet but fast in the head."
"Muzzie's going to call on his mother, and then we'd better ask him to
supper, hadn't we? He must be horribly lonesome."
"I'll float over and see him," the last King suggested, "and sort of size
him up. Give him the once-over. We don't want to start anything unless
he's O. K. Might as well go now, I guess."
"All right. Come in afterward and tell me what you think of him."

He nodded and swung off across the street. It was an hour before he
came back, glowing. "Gee, Skipper, I'm strong for that kid! Name's
Van Meter, Carter Van Meter. He's got a head on him, that boy! He's
been everywhere and seen everything--three times abroad--Canada,
Mexico! You ought to hear him talk--not a bit up-stagy, no side at all,
but interesting! I asked him for supper, Sunday night. You'll be crazy
about him--all the bunch will!" Thus Jimsy King on the day Carter Van
Meter limped into his life; thus Jimsy King through the years which
followed, worshiping humbly the things he did not have in himself,
belittling his own gifts, enlarging his own lacks, glorifying his friend.
He had never had a deeply intimate boy friend before; the team was his
friend, the squad; Honor had sufficed for a nearer tie. It was to be
different, now; a sharing. She was to resent a