'mr. Rockne Would Have Liked That'

He blushed a little, but still grinning at me, he stopped dancing and was mopping his forehead with a large white handkerchief, as the nasal voice continued: "I was just saying, this is great stuff, this kind of dancing!"

"Who are you?" I asked, more bewildered than ever.

Before he had time to answer, it flashed through my dazed consciousness that this boy was Jack Adams—a promising freshman everybody was talking about who had broken his nose playing a most valiant game of football the year before.

"Where do you come from?" I persisted, still dazed.

I can't remember what he answered. I wasn't listening. Before he had finished talking, as though in a dream, I blurted out, "But that's not near South Bend..." He began to look strangely at me, but I hardly noticed.

" Mr. Rockne would have liked that," I found myself saying.

"What?" Adams asked me.

"About the dance."

"Oh," Adams said. "I see."

And the strange part of it is, I believe Adams did see. It was odd the way he was not puzzled by my remark. He grinned with that same look of sharing a deep unspoken secret I had seen so often in Mr. Rockne's face. Mr. Rockne would have liked that.