He opened the front door and toiled up the first flight of steps. The second flight loomed like Mount Everest. But he set to work on it, dragging his feet wearily one after the other. So, finally, he attained the very last step. And there he had to stop and rest before negotiating the remaining twenty feet of hallway to his room. He sat there leaning against the wall, smiling. Chester Trask had personally told him to report for football at two o'clock the next afternoon!
And there Peggy, coming home from work, found him.
It was a very flushed and excited Peggy that mounted the steps. She was going to tell Harold Lamb something for his own good, disillusion him!
For that very afternoon, not ten minutes previous, Dan Sheldon had brought an excruciatingly funny news to the group of college loafers loitering around her counter in the Hotel Tate.
"I've got a new one on 'Speedy,'" Dan offered jocosely. "He thinks he made the football team, and he's only the water boy."
Some member of the squad, disregarding Trask's orders, had communicated this choice morsel to Dan.
The laughter resulting from Dan's sally made Peggy, behind the counter, boil. Fi-
