Only for that Nick would be a jim-dandy hand at any old athletic sport.

I wonder if it will last, or is he due to break loose, to-night perhaps, just because he's held himself in so long." These and many similar remarks passed between the astonished boys of Scranton High, but they did not seem able to understand it at all.
Hugh, however, only smiled when they appealed to him, and would say nothing; but deep down in his heart he was satisfied that the seed he had sown had fallen on fallow soil and taken root..