Lowell Woodruff, though, fully atoned for any inattention on the coach’s part. Lowell assured Jim more than once that he fully appreciated the latter’s presence among the candidates, and he was almost embarrassingly solicitous as to his welfare. In fact, his efforts to keep Jim contented with his lot were so painstaking that Jim got it into his head that the manager was making fun of him, and he took a mild dislike to the well-meaning Lowell. As he made no mention of the matter to Clem, the misunderstanding existed well into the season.
Alton played the local high school team, winning by 21 to 7 in a long and uninteresting contest, and defeated Banning High School a week later by 17 to 0. Jim watched both contests from the bench and added considerably to his knowledge of the science in which he was a beginner. But neither game produced any thrilling moments, and Jim continued unmoved in his opinion that football was rather an uninteresting pursuit and certainly not deserving of all the time and attention given it. Then, after a week of practice that made the preceding fortnight seem in retrospect a period of languid idleness, Lorimer Academy visited Alton, and Jim’s conviction was slightly shaken.
CHAPTER VII
OFF-SIDE
Lorimer always gave a scrappy argument. In fact, she had on one occasion argued so well that a tie score had resulted. This year she looked better than usual when she went onto the field for practice, and there were those on the stands who, perhaps naturally pessimistic, shook their heads and predicted a defeat for the Gray-and-Gold. They had reason on their side, too, for Lorimer was known to have a practically veteran team while Alton’s team was still in the throes of constructing itself around no more than four proven warriors. And the visitors had superior weight in both line and backfield, although the superiority was not vast. So the pessimists had plenty of arguments with which to support their dismal prophecies.
Coach Cade put his best foot forward when the game started, using the best material he had in the hope of getting a safe lead in the first half. After that he could use his substitutes with discrimination and, he believed, hold the enemy at bay. But the safe lead didn’t materialize according to his program. Gains through the Lorimer line were few and difficult to make, and before the game was ten minutes old it was apparent that, with the few plays Alton had at present, she was going to be hard put to score unless the breaks came her way. In the first period the only break came when Lorimer blocked Steve Whittier’s try at a field goal on her thirty-three yards and a Lorimer tackle scooped up the trickling ball and sped to Alton’s twenty-seven yards before he was brought down from behind by Billy Frost. It looked very much like a Lorimer score just then, and when the enemy had tossed a forward pass across the center of the line for six yards more it looked vastly more like it. It took Lorimer the next three downs to get the rest of her distance and fetch up just inside the seventeen. Doubtless the pessimists were gloomily happy then. But Lorimer didn’t have the punch to score, for, after one smash at left tackle had been stopped, an end run had lost half a yard and a forward pass had grounded near the side-line, her try for a goal from near the twenty-five-yard line failed.
Alton had some success with a full-back run from kick-formation, Crumb carrying the ball, and got off one forward-pass of twenty yards, Crumb to Kinsey, and worked the pigskin back to mid-field and then into Lorimer territory. But the invasion petered out in a punt that the Lorimer quarter-back took on his five-yard-line and laid down finally on his thirty-one. The Lorimer rooters thought well of that incident and let the fact be known. Alton displayed scarcely any signs of delight. That ended the first ten-minute quarter.
As if to play even, Fortune favored the home team soon after the second period began by giving her a chance to score when Billy Frost poked his way outside tackle and got free for a thirty-eight-yard scamper that put the ball down on the adversary’s twenty-six. Crumb hit the right of center for two and got three more outside tackle. Billy Frost tried the left end, was thrown for no gain, and Steve Whittier dropped back to the thirty while Quarter-back Kinsey knelt on the turf in front of him and held his hands out for the ball. Alton was all ready to burst into triumphant cheers, for Steve was a good place-kicker, and the ball was directly in front of the goal. But Alton was reckoning without Mr. Loring Cheswick, center. Loring set himself firmly and carefully, measured distance and noted direction and then sped the ball a foot above Pep’s reach!
So that ended that incident, except that Steve did all that was humanly possible by chasing the bounding pigskin back to the forty-yard line, gathering it up expeditiously and doubling back toward the Lorimer goal. But the best he could do was to reach the thirty-four, close to the side-line, where he was pulled to earth by no fewer than three of the enemy. Alton seemed discouraged and Pep’s choice of plays was not of the best. A plunge on the short side of the field netted but a scant yard and didn’t take the runner over the side-line. Pep’s own run to the left almost centered the ball but lost the first gain and two yards more. A fake kick from placement, which fooled nobody, gave Crumb four yards through center, and after a conference that was rudely interrupted by the referee, Whittier punted to Lorimer’s three yards.
Lorimer kicked promptly and got distance, and Pep was downed where he caught. On the first play Levering, at left end, was caught off-side, and Alton was set back to the forty-seven yards. Two downs failed to gain, and Alton punted again. This time Pep got height but not much more and the ball was Lorimer’s on her thirty-one when the catcher was stopped. It was there and then that the visitor began a march up the field that would not be denied. Three first downs brought her to Alton’s thirty-seven. Coach Cade sent in fresh linemen to the number of three and for a moment the advance faltered. Then a forward-pass gathered in eight yards and a plunge at center brought another first down. Progress was slower but still apparently sure, and Lorimer reached the sixteen in four plays. There, however, with the time-keeper hovering fatefully near, Alton dug her cleats and spoiled two attempts at her line. From the fourteen yards Lorimer brought off a tricky forward-pass that was shot across the goal-line from behind a wall of moving interference. That pass failed badly, though, for the receiver was not in position, and after the ball had been juggled by two Alton backs it grounded. Had Lorimer fulfilled the expectations of the audience she might have ended the first half with a three-point lead, for it was only reasonable to suppose that a try-at-goal from the twenty-four yards would succeed. But Lorimer, perhaps reasoning that her opponent was certain to score before the game was over, in which case three points would not be sufficient for a victory, decided on all or nothing. With eight yards needed for a first down she set the stage for a drop-kick and then shot her quarter-back on a wide run behind good interference. For a moment it looked as if she was going to get what she was after, for when the quarter turned in he went romping straight for the goal-line, threw off two tacklers and seemed safe for a touch-down. But Hick Powers saved the day for the Gray-and-Gold, plunging into the runner and lifting him back into a fighting mêlée. The referee whistled and dug his heel into the five-yard line, and then, after a look at the rods, waved his hand up the field. Alton shouted relief and triumph. After Whittier had punted from behind his line the half ended.
Jim went back to the gymnasium with the rest of the squad, feeling for almost the first time that perhaps football did, after all, hold compensations for all the drudgery and hard knocks entailed; that is, if you were on the field instead of the bench! He began to wonder what his chances were of ever taking a hand in a real contest, and what he could do to better them.
Mr. Cade’s talk before the players took the field again was brief and energetic. Jim, listening attentively from the outer edge of the circle, had lost his unsympathetic attitude. There was sense in what Johnny was telling them, and reason. After all, it did seem necessary to lick Lorimer, and, if you granted that, then there was excuse enough for all this intensity of purpose. Jim added his own voice to the cheer that followed the coach’s final grim, “Let’s go get ’em!”
There were changes in the line-up of each team when the ball was kicked off again, but Alton presented more new faces than did her opponent. There were new men in the line and two new men behind it. One of these was Latham at quarter-back. Latham proved good medicine while he stayed in, for Alton worked faster and with more vim than in the first half. Yet for seven minutes of the ten neither team threatened. Then a fumbled punt was recovered by Levering on Lorimer’s thirty-three yards and suddenly the Gray-and-Gold visioned success and went after it hard. Crumb, who had borne a great deal of the work in the first two periods and had been taken out to rest, was hurried back and celebrated his return with a fine off-tackle charge that took the ball to the twenty-six. Latham gained a yard straight through center and Crumb made it first down on the enemy’s twenty-two.
An end run put away a scant two, and Frost was stopped trying to get inside right tackle. Steve Whittier went back to the thirty-three yards as though to try a goal, but the ball went to Crumb and the full-back got another two through right guard. With six to go on fourth down a field-goal seemed the only hope, for Alton’s passing game was still undeveloped, and when Steve again went back the eyes of the Lorimer sympathizers sought the cross-bar. But Steve didn’t kick the ball when he got it. He lifted it in his right hand and stepped back and out to the left. Then he shot it diagonally across toward the right-hand corner of the field, where Levering was speeding toward the goal-line. The right end looked over his shoulder, stopped abruptly, letting a Lorimer back go past, and pulled the pass out of the air on the seven yards. He made the four before he was forced over the side-line. When the ball had been brought in and a winded Lorimer man had been administered to, Crumb tried the right of center and made a scant yard. Pandemonium reigned in the stands. Latham tried to knife himself through center and added part of a second yard. Crumb again went straight at center. It seemed that Alton was determined to make that score there or not at all. The linesman’s little iron stick moved forward another two feet. Fourth down and still about two to go. This time Crumb went back a little farther from his line, and when, once more, he took the pass from center he was going hard when he reached the swaying lines. Playing desperately but playing low, Lorimer might have withstood this final attack by the heavy full-back had he stayed on his feet, but he didn’t. He went up and over, and although he was soon borne back again, he had reached the last white line first, and that long-deferred score had been won at last!
When the last quarter started, a minute and a half after Captain Fingal had missed the try-for-point by inches only, Coach Cade put back most of his first-string players, and for the succeeding ten minutes of playing time the Gray-and-Gold punted on first down as often as the ball became hers inside her forty-yard line. She was frankly on the defensive now and sought delay by all fair means. Twice, early in the period, Lorimer started an advance by forward-passes that got no farther than the thirty-five. The second one ended when Levering intercepted a long heave and ran it back into enemy territory. On the whole, that final quarter was all Alton’s, for the ball reached her territory only three times and never stayed long. Lorimer’s passing game failing her, she had little left to offer, for while her backs could still gain through the opposing line the gains were too short to score with.
When the quarter was almost over, Coach Cade ripped his team apart and put it together again with many new components. It was risky, but the results upheld him. Jim Todd, never for an instant expecting the call to duty, failed to hear it until a neighbor ejected him from the bench with a rude hand at the back of his neck. Jim, blinking, found Coach Cade beckoning. “Go in at left tackle,” he commanded. “Roice is out. Report to the referee and don’t speak to another person until the first play is over. Let’s see what you can do, Todd. If any one gets through you you’ll hear from me!”
Jim tried to remember all those instructions as he hurried on and concluded that he had probably missed some of them. Probably he hadn’t, though, for he fulfilled them all. No one threatened his position seriously during the remaining three minutes of actual play. Or, if any one did, Jim didn’t realize it. Once he got quite a thrill when a scowling, dirt-smeared face crashed into his shoulder, and he seized a writhing body and deposited it back where it had come from, and once he got a terrific jar when, seeking to tackle a speeding Lorimer half, he missed badly and landed, to the best of his knowledge, on the back of his neck and did a wild and doubtless inelegant somersault. He felt both hurt and foolish and wondered for an instant if any one had observed his humiliation. There was, he concluded, quite a difference between tackling the dummy and tackling an enemy runner. He made up his mind that the next time he would do better. But, although he ran around a good deal during the rest of the game, and got slightly winded when some unknown person butted him in the stomach with a knee, he had no opportunity to redeem himself as a tackler. To his surprise, he discovered that he was considerably excited, so excited, in fact, that after one play a horn squawked and a voice that Jim didn’t like at all called: “Alton left tackle off-side!”
“Me?” demanded Jim in tones of outrage. “Who says so?”
He looked about for some one to discuss it with, but Pep Kinsey, back at quarter, told him to shut up and watch what he was doing, and then Lorimer’s signals came again and he had to accept the verdict. Fortunately that five-yard set-back, occurring as it did well inside Lorimer territory, made no real difference, and after a Lorimer back had made a desperate effort to skirt the Alton left end and had been piled on his head for a scant one-yard gain the game ended.
Going back to the gymnasium, with the lessening cheers of the Alton supporters in his ears, Jim tried to convince Charley Levering that some one had done him a great injustice. But Charley only grinned and said rudely: “You’re cuckoo, Todd. You were off-side a yard when the ball moved.”
“I was?” asked Jim, crestfallen, still incredulous.
“Of course you were. I saw you myself, didn’t I? You’ve got to be mighty clever to beat the ball and get away with it nowadays, Todd. If I were you I’d cut it out.”
“But I didn’t mean to! I didn’t know – ”
“That’s what we all say,” jeered Levering. “But all it gets us is five yards – backward!”
Jim was forced to the conclusion that the individual with the unpleasant voice was probably right, after all. Jim recalled the fact that at the moment he had been slightly excited. Maybe he had started too soon. He wondered if Coach Cade would hold it against him. He must take care not to do it again, anyhow!
There was a meeting of the Maine-and-Vermont Club that evening and Jim didn’t see Clem to talk to until bedtime. Then, to Clem’s utter surprise, Jim began a narrative, a most detailed and exhaustive story of the last three minutes of the afternoon’s contest. Jim recounted what he had done, what he had failed to do, what he had thought and how he had felt during every one of the, approximately, six hundred seconds that he had been on the field. Clem let him run down. Then he said: “Well, Jim, I’ll say you did mighty well.”
Jim looked thoughtful while a slow smile encompassed his features. “Well, I don’t know,” he answered modestly. “Do you really?”
“I certainly do,” affirmed Clem emphatically. “Of course, Lorimer was probably pretty well tuckered out by that time, but, just the same, for you to keep them from scoring was quite a stunt.”
“Well,” began Jim doubtfully.
“If you’d had any help it would be different, Jim, but for you, alone and unaided, to do a thing like you tell about was great!”
“Alone?” faltered Jim, puzzled. “I didn’t say I was alone. Of course I wasn’t alone, Clem!”
“You weren’t?” Clem registered surprise. “Oh, my mistake, old son. You see, you didn’t mention any one else and so I naturally concluded that – ”
“Oh, gosh,” muttered Jim feebly.
“So you had help, eh?”
“For a rotten apple I’d punch your face,” replied Jim, grinning. “Honest, I didn’t know I was bragging, Clem!”
“I don’t think you were, Jim. I was just having my little joke. Anyway, for a chap who couldn’t see football at all a couple of weeks ago you seem to be at least faintly interested in it!”
“I guess,” said Jim thoughtfully, “I’m going to like it!”
CHAPTER VIII
JIM BUYS A FOOTBALL
As a room-mate Jim was, Clem soon decided, a very satisfactory chap. They got on together excellently. Jim was not monotonous as a companion, for while he might fairly be termed even tempered you couldn’t call him good-natured in the popular meaning of the term. If you expected to put anything over on Jim, relying on his good nature to get away with it, you were in for a surprise. Clem realized that without a demonstration. Jim would take a joke perfectly, but he had a sense of dignity that prohibited liberties. That he was capable of temper Clem didn’t doubt, although he held it well under control.
When Jim had declared in his letter to Clem that he was “neat about the place” he had, Clem soon decided, stated less than the facts. Clem himself was certainly not untidy, but his idea of neatness and Jim’s were wide apart. Jim looked after his part of Number 15 so carefully and minutely that Clem’s half of the room suffered badly by comparison. Clem said once: “You aren’t neat, Jim, you’re finnicky!” For a fortnight Clem really suffered from such excess of tidiness, for quite unconsciously Jim’s attentions were extended to his room-mate’s territory and the book tossed on the table in the morning had mysteriously disappeared by afternoon, to be discovered, after patient search, neatly hidden under a pile of others. If he left his cap on his bed, half an hour later it was gone. At first he used to look on the floor for it and under the bed. Later he learned to go directly to his closet and take it down from a hook. The second time this experience fell to him he said: “Hang it all, Jim, what’s the idea? Here it is in the closet. You must have put it there. I know I didn’t!”
“Really?” asked Jim, surprised. “I don’t remember touching it. I’m awfully sorry.”
“Oh, it’s all right,” answered Clem, “but do you know what I think? I think you must have been born in a filing cabinet!”
Jim looked slightly blank, and Clem went out without elucidating.
After some two weeks of life in Number 15 with Jim, Clem caught the habit. He never attained to such perfection of orderliness as the other’s, and doubtless to the end of their days together Jim secretly considered Clem just a trifle careless about the room, but, just as evidence of how thoroughly he had fallen under Jim’s spell, he once, having reached the door on his way to chapel, returned the length of the room to place his slippers more perfectly in alignment under the head of the bed. It is doubtful, however, if Jim would have given him any credit for that. Jim would have kept his slippers, had he owned a pair, in his closet!
At the beginning of the term the two were not together a great deal outside of sleeping and study hours. Jim foregathered frequently with certain members of the Maine-and-Vermont Club and Clem’s acquaintances were not yet Jim’s. They might have been, for Clem suggested more than once that his room-mate accompany him on his social excursions. But Jim invariably had an excuse. The latter did meet two or three of Clem’s circle of intimates, but the meetings were only casual. The school year was a fortnight old when Jim first blossomed out in society.
The occasion was a birthday party given by Arthur Landorf to Arthur Landorf and some of Arthur Landorf’s friends. Much assistance, however, was provided by Art’s parents, for they had sent a box holding practically all the requirements of a birthday celebration, including a frosted cake with seventeen pink candles. The affair was held in Number 20 Lykes, which room Art shared with Larry Adams. Art was a hockey and baseball man and Larry a member of the second eleven. When Art invited Clem he added: “And bring your room-mate, whatever his name is, if he cares to come.” So Clem delivered the invitation to Jim and Jim started to find an excuse, as usual. But Clem was fed up by now.
“Stop it!” he said sternly. “I don’t give a continental if you’ve got a dinner engagement with Doctor Maitland himself and are down to address the faculty afterwards! You’re going with me to Art’s blow-out and you might just as well make up your mind to it. Say, what’s the colossal idea, anyhow? Aren’t my associates good enough for you?”
“Oh, I don’t like to butt in on that crowd,” said Jim. “I ain’t their sort, Clem. I – I haven’t got any parlor tricks.”
“Parlor tricks! Who’s asking you to do tricks? You can sit on a chair or a bed or something without falling off, can’t you? And you can say ‘Thank you’ when some one shoves a hunk of cake at you, I suppose. Well, that’s all you have to do, you big lummox.”
“We-ell, if you think I won’t be in the way,” said Jim dubiously, “and this fellow really said to ask me – ”
“Oh, shut up,” grumbled Clem. “Would I be asking you if he didn’t? Thursday night, old son, and don’t forget.”
“Well, maybe – ”
“That’ll be all,” declared Clem. “It’s settled.”
So Jim went along, somewhat subdued at first and hanging back when they reached Number 20 Lykes, from beyond the closed door of which sounds of merriment issued. But Clem herded him inside and shut off escape, and then Jim was shaking hands with Art and assuring him that he was “glad to make his acquaintance.” Whereupon, Art, not to be outdone, replied gravely: “The pleasure is all mine, Mr. Todd,” and Jim made his way through a sea of protruding legs to a seat in a far corner, fortunately not observing the smiles that followed his progress. To his relief, he presently discovered that he knew three of the party, at least to speak to: Lowell Woodruff and Hick Powers and Larry Adams. The gathering was presently completed by the arrival of Gus Fingal and George Imbrie, the latter editor-in-chief of the school weekly, The Doubleay. The two were amusingly unalike, for Imbrie’s short, slim form reached only to the football captain’s shoulder, and whereas Gus’s big, square head was radiant with tow-colored hair that looked almost silvery in the light, Imbrie’s was clad in very dark locks slicked smoothly away from a pale, intellectual forehead. Imbrie wore tortoise-shell “cheaters,” although it was rumored that they were only for effect and aided his sight no more than Harold Lloyd’s aided his! With the arrival of the last guests the proceedings opened officially. That is, Art turned off the electric light, switched aside a newspaper that had covered the birthday cake and applied a match to the seventeen little pink candles. Loud applause followed and then, at a signal from Larry Adams, Art tried to blow out the candles in one mighty breath and failed because Gus slammed him between the shoulders just then. After that the cake was cut – with a clasp-knife for want of anything better – and the feast began.
Some hosts might have kept the cake until toward the end of the repast, but Art said it didn’t seem to him to matter whether you ate your cake first or last, just so you got it, and so it was devoured right along with the sandwiches and pickles and olives and ginger cookies and sweet chocolate and all the other delicacies. Of the gathering, however, four were out of luck, for although the football candidates at Alton were allowed more leeway in the matter of diet than before the days of Coach Cade, sweets were not in great favor, and so Jim, who, while not at the training table, was still bound in honor to observe training table rules, and Captain Gus and Powers and Adams had to be content with homeopathic portions of cake and to confine the balance of their menu to the sandwiches and olives. But there was plenty of tepid gingerale and they fared well enough.
Lowell Woodruff found a place next to Jim when the party reseated itself and did his best to be agreeable. Jim, however, still viewed him with suspicion and the conversation didn’t become animated, and after a while Lowell gave up and turned to his neighbor on the other side. On the whole, Jim didn’t have a very happy time at that party. Clem was separated from him by the width of the room and hidden for the most of the time by the table, and Jim felt rather out of it. He was glad when Gus Fingal’s departure broke up the gathering. He tried to tell his host politely that he had enjoyed his party, but was saved from the untruth when one of the others pushed him outside. In the jostling and confusion he got away without a word to Art. Returning to the next dormitory, Clem did all the talking. Perhaps it didn’t occur to him to ask if Jim had had a good time. At all events, he didn’t ask, and Jim was glad of it. Jim was a poor liar, and knew it.
That ended Jim’s social activities for some time. There were no more birthday parties among Clem’s friends, but Clem tried on several occasions to get Jim to accompany him on visits to other rooms, and Jim thanked him and declined firmly. Clem called him a hermit.
Following the Lorimer game Jim’s services were called on daily. Sometimes he got into the scrimmage for only a handful of minutes, infrequently he worked through a whole period. He had survived the second and last cut and had taken his place on the squad as a second-string tackle. There was even the possibility, indeed the probability, of getting into the Kenly Hall game, for the roster of tackles included only three others: Roice, Sawyer and Mulford. Jim was the least experienced of the lot, and at this stage he knew perfectly well that so far as playing ability went he was a bad fourth. But he had hopes of becoming as good as Mulford, at least. In more optimistic moments he even saw himself rivaling Willard Sawyer, who was the present incumbent of the right tackle position. What he couldn’t imagine was ever equaling Roice. “Rolls” was almost the best lineman on the team. Only Captain Fingal was graded above him by popular opinion.
Jim had not only held the weight he had brought back with him but had added three pounds to it, and while, later on, he frequently dropped those three during a hard afternoon, he always found them again. Had Jim been more experienced he might well have wondered sometimes at being retained on the squad. He had played football but three weeks or so before the present season and had not during those three weeks shown much ability. He was at least six pounds lighter than the position called for, since Alton always presented a heavy line. In general appearance, he did not suggest the ideal tackle. But Jim had seen little football and so it didn’t occur to him that there was anything unusual in his choice as a tackle. Not a few amateur critics, however, declared that Todd might be end material but would never be of any value as a tackle. He didn’t have enough weight, they said, and what he had wasn’t distributed properly. Besides, who was he, anyway, and what had he ever done to get where he was?
But Coach Cade wasn’t making a very great mistake. If Jim was somewhat lacking in weight – he was nine pounds lighter than Rolls Roice, for instance – he possessed two other of the necessary qualifications of a good tackle, and might later show that he had a third. Weight he lacked, mental ability he had not shown, but physical speed and stamina he did have. He was fast developing into the speediest candidate for his position, and Coach Cade, who held speed in the deepest reverence, was ready to forgive him many shortcomings. Also, Jim had hard muscles, muscles developed in the open air and at a greater variety of strenuous tasks than most boys know, and he had endurance. You might tire Jim, but you couldn’t tire him out. At least, no one ever had. Jim’s father could tell you of walking sixty miles between daybreak and sundown in the old days of logging in Maine; and Jim looked a whole lot like his father! Coach Cade couldn’t know of the boy’s stamina yet, but he did suspect it, and as time went on he was able to indulge in not a little self-gratulation, which is pleasant even to a football coach.
Once having become thoroughly interested in the game, Jim learned about twice as fast as he had before. At first he accepted instruction without giving it much thought. Now he sought the reason for everything he was taught, found it and understood what he was doing and why. Jim liked to know the logic of what he undertook. If he couldn’t discover a reason for doing a thing he didn’t do it unless some one forced him to. Then he did it only half-heartedly. His rules book helped him a lot. There were books that would have explained many things to him and saved him much thought, but he didn’t know of them; and studying things out for himself doubtless made him remember them better. He amused Clem about this time – I am speaking of the week between the Lorimer and Southport games – by buying a football of his own and keeping it on the closet shelf. Several times daily he would take it down and handle it; drop it on the floor and catch it as it rebounded, place it on the floor and pick it up with one hand, his long fingers wrapping themselves about the end like – as Clem phrased it – a starfish on a quahog. Sometimes Clem would look up to find Jim with the ball poised in his right hand as if he meant to hurl it straight through the window, and always when he studied his rules book the brown leather spheroid was in his lap. Clem told him one evening, in mild protest, that he was sickening.