Team! Of course common sense told him later that it wasn't, but Mr. Babcock had almost made it seem so for the moment!
"Cocky" seemed to have left behind him in the gymnasium some of the brusqueness that awed his classes. To-day he acted and looked and spoke like a "regular fellow." He had on a pair of old canvas football pants, a faded red sweater and two of the most disreputable gray woolen stockings ever seen out of a rag bag. Those stockings had been frequently and variously darned until there remained but very little of the original material; and despite all the mending they still cried out for help. "Cocky's" sturdy calves were visible in wide areas in more places than one! "Cocky" wasn't a handsome man, for his face was too square, his nose too blunt and his eyebrows too heavy. To be frank, Mr. Henry Babcock, B.A., looked rather like a retired gentleman pugilist; or, perhaps, like one's idea of such a person. He was about thirty years old, affected very loose tweed suits and, between the hours of five and six, behind the closed door of Number 19 East Hall, played weird melodies on an English horn. Any one who has ever heard an English horn engaged in rendering a solo will understand why the door was closed!
"I've got a little speech to make, fellows," said "Cocky," spreading a pair of muscular arms along the edge of the seat behind him, "so you'd better sit down, and make yourselves comfortable for a few minutes. Now, then, you know what a Scrub Team
