"You put it over the 'soreheads' so hard that we never heard from them again after we got started." "You helped there, also, Purcell.

If you and Ripley and a few others had gone over to the 'soreheads' it would have stiffened their backbone and nothing could have made it possible, this year, for Gridley High School to have an eleven that would represent all the best football that there is in the grand old school." In the first two years of their school life Dick and Dave had spent many pleasant hours in the society of Laura and Belle.
So far, during the junior year, the chums had had but little chance to see the girls, for the demands of football were fearfully exacting.
Laura, being almost at the threshold of seventeen years, had grown tall and womanly.

Bert Dodge began to notice what a very pretty girl the doctor's daughter was becoming.

So, one afternoon while the football squad was practicing hard over on the athletic field, Bert encountered Laura and Belle as they strolled down the Main Street.
Lifting his hat, Dodge greeted the girls, and stood chatting with them for a few moments.

To this neither of the girls could object, for Bert's manners, with the other sex, were always irreproachable.
But, presently, Laura saw her chance.