Play the Game! | Page 5

witch's hand at cookery and a witch's temper. And there were only James King III and James King IV, his son, Honor's Jimsy, left of the line in the old home. The negress fed and mended them; an infrequent Japanese came in to make futile efforts on house and garden.
The neighbors said, "How do you do, Mr. King? Like summer, really, isn't it?" and looked hastily away. One never could be sure of finding him quite himself. Even if he walked quite steadily he might not be able to talk quite steadily, but he was always a King, always sure of his manner, be he ever so unsure of his feet or his tongue. He had been worse since his wife died, when the boy was still a toddler. She was a slim, sandy-haired Scotch girl with steady eyes and a prominent chin, who had married him to reform him, and the neighbors were beginning to think she was in a fair way to compass it when she died. No one had ever been able to pity Jeanie King; she had been as proud as the pale lady who came with the first "Wild King" from Virginia. There was that about the Kings; it had to be granted that their women always stuck; they must have had compensating traits and graces. No King wife ever gave up or deserted save by death, and no King wife ever wept on a neighbor's shoulder.
And now they had all wandered back to Virginia or up to Alaska or down to Mexico, and there was not an uncle or cousin of his tribe left in Los Angeles for Jimsy King; only his bad, beloved father, coming home at noon in rumpled evening dress, but wearing it better and more handily, for all that, than any other man on the block.
It was agreed that there was no chance for Jimsy to escape the heritage of his blood. People were kind about it, but very firm. "If his mother had lived he might have had a chance, the poor boy," Mrs. Lorimer would sigh, "but with that father, and that home life, and that example----"
"My dear," said Stephen Lorimer, "can't you see what you are doing? By you I mean the neighborhood. You are holding his heredity up like a hoop for him to jump through!"
Honor's stepfather held that there might be a generous share of the firm-chinned Scotch mother in Jimsy. Certainly it was a fighting chance; he was living in a day of less warmth and color than his father and his forbears; there were more outlets for his interest and his energy. His father, for instance, had not played football. Jimsy had played as soon as he could walk alone--football, baseball, basketball, handball, water polo; life was a hard and tingling game to him. "It's an even chance," said Stephen Lorimer, "and if Honor's palling with him can swing it, can we square it with ourselves to take her away from him?" He carried his point, as usual, and the boy and the girl started in at Los Angeles High on the same day. Honor decided on the subjects which Jimsy could most safely take--the things he was strongest in, the weak subjects in which she was strong. There was an inexorable rule about being signed up by every teacher for satisfactory work on Friday afternoon before a Saturday football game; it was as a law of the Medes and Persians; even the teachers who adored him most needs must abide by it. There was no cajoling any of them; even the pretty, ridiculously young thing who taught Spanish maintained a Gibraltar-like firmness.
"You'll simply have to study, Jimsy, that's all," said Honor.
"Study, yes, but that's not learning, Skipper!" (She had been that ever since her first entirely seaworthy summer at Catalina.) "I can study, if I have to, but that's not saying I'll get anything into my sconce! I'm pretty slow in the head!"
"I know you are," said Honor, sighing. "Of course, you've been so busy with other things. Think what you've done in 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 for having to be a girl. Just for the moment, I'm not sitting up