This was one of the times when Patterson needed encouragement.
"Yes, I do," Owen replied earnestly. "You're gaining all the time. If you're willing to count by the weeks instead of the days, you'll see a gain yourself. You may never be able to do the things with a ball that Carle can do,—he's got a wonderful wrist, that fellow!—but you may be just as good a pitcher."
"As good as Carle!" cried Patterson, with a grin of incredulity. "You're jollying me!"
"Not a bit!" Owen retorted. "You never will see that it isn't what you do to the ball, but what the batsman doesn't do to it, that shows that you are a pitcher. Suppose Carle has ten chances and throws five of them away, and you have eight and throw away only two, who is the better man?"
Patterson shook his head doubtfully. "It's one thing to stand in the cage and put 'em where you say; it's a different thing to face a batter in a game and feel that he may drive the next one over the fence."
"You can put 'em where I say just the same, can't you?" retorted Owen, sharply, as he opened his books. There was good promise in Patterson, but these attacks of despondency were of distinctly bad omen.
"You didn't tell me how Payner got hold of Eddy," said Patterson, returning again to the topic from which he had been diverted by the ever recurrent baseball.
"Didn't I? Well, Payner is a great fellow for bugs,—in fact, for every kind of animal, big or little, that has more than two legs; and Eddy is cracked on trees and birds. Payner spent all his half-holidays last fall, when he ought to have been at the football games, up the river looking for bugs and slugs. He found Eddy up there watching birds. So they got acquainted."
Patterson emitted a little sniff, midway between a sneer and a chuckle.